The impact of COVID-19 hygienic measures on food choice and eating behaviour

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic led to severaI lifestyle changes including on eating behavior. Therefore, we sought to evaluate if depicting pandemic-related sanitary cues in a food video would Impact food appraisal. Decreasing food attractiveness and the desire to eat In two different days, participants performed an online protocol in which a food video and food pictures should be evaluated regarding visual aspect, expected smell and teste and desire to eat. The videos presented each day differed regarding the presence/absence of sanitary elements adopted during the pandemics, composing the Covid/Non-Covid conditions. Sweet and high calorie foods received significantly higher evaluations compared to salty and low-calorie foods, being the sweet food evaluation higher in the Non-Covid condition. The Non-Covid video increased the desire to eat and in both days, it was higher at the end of the task when compared to baseline. Further, our data suggests that depression and anxiety may reduce smell appreciation of foods presented M the pandemic scenario. In sum, food perception seems affected by the presence of the pandemic-related sanitary cues, reducing the desire to eat and food hedonic appreciation with such effects being further potentiated by depression and anxiety symptoms that arise from the pandemics.