Nutritional behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: the association of fear and sleep quality with emotional eating

Purpose: Even though it is known that fear and poor sleep quality trigger emotional eating, whether fear and poor sleep quality are associated with emotional eating during the COVID-19 pandemic is not clear. This study aimed to evaluate the association of fear of COVID-19, sleep quality, and some sociodemographic characteristics with emotional eating during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: This cross-sectional descriptive study was completed with 495 participants in Turkey. The participants filled out a questionnaire that asked about sociodemographic characteristics, fear of COVID-19, nutritional behaviors, sleep quality, and self-reported weight and height through email or social media.

Results: The fear of COVID-19 score (β: 0.090, p < 0.05) and sleep quality score (β: 0.289, p < 0.001) were associated with the emotional eating score at the rate of 0.8% and 8.3%, respectively. The association of fear of COVID-19 with emotional eating disappeared when combined with various factors. The collective association of all factors, fear of COVID-19 (β: 0.042, p > 0.05), sleep quality (β: 0.246, p < 0.001), BMI (β: 0.275, p < 0.001), age (β: - 0.259, p < 0.001) and gender (β: - 0.169, p < 0.001) were associated with the emotional eating score at the rate of 18.3%.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that fear of COVID-19, sleep quality, BMI, age, and gender were associated with emotional eating during the pandemic. We hope that this study will help in the development of guidelines and strategies through understanding the factors associated with nutritional behavior during the pandemic period.

Level of evidence: Level V, cross-sectional descriptive study.