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REVIEW article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health and Nutrition
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1485423
This article is part of the Research Topic Food Insecurity, Food Environment, Malnutrition and Obesity in Low- and Medium-Income Countries View all 6 articles

Dietary changes during COVID-19 lockdown in Iranian households: are we witnessing a secular trend? A narrative review National Food and Nutrition Surveillance

Provisionally accepted
Bahareh Nikooyeh Bahareh Nikooyeh 1Delaram Ghodsi Delaram Ghodsi 1Maryam Amini Maryam Amini 1Samira Rabiei Samira Rabiei 1Hamid Rasekhi Hamid Rasekhi 1Mohammad E. Motlagh Mohammad E. Motlagh 2Tirang R. Neyestani Tirang R. Neyestani 1*
  • 1 National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran
  • 2 Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Khuzestan, Iran

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The pandemic of coronavirus infection emerging in the late 2019 influenced almost all aspects of human life including food choices and dietary habits.: A web-based search was conducted during March-April 2024 in MEDLINE/PubMed, CINAHL, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library for published reports of largescale surveys on dietary changes during or shortly after coronavirus pandemic lockdown in Iran.The key words used were coronavirus OR COVID-19, diet OR nutrition, household and Iran.Those studies confined to an area, subgroups (like students) or just a city or province were not included. To track dietary changes from years before the lockdown, we used and plotted data from the Households Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), Statistical Centre of Iran.The overall results of the nationwide studies during lockdown period in Iran revealed that consumption of milk, yogurt, cheese, red meat, white meat, eggs and rice/bread decreased in a sizeable proportion of the households. In about 47% of the households who had decreased their weekly consumption of animal protein sources, the intake of rice and bread had increased instead.Accordingly, 35% and 44% of the households reported decreased consumption frequency of fruits and snacks, respectively, with 21% of those with decreased fruit consumption completely removed fruits from their food baskets. Meanwhile, dietary supplement use especially vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and multivitamin had increased in the households but mostly among those with higher incomes. Decreased income was a common reason for all these dietary changes which can have very serious health consequence in long term.In this review, we show evidence that these changes had already been started years before the pandemic and presumably have not been back to pre-pandemic situation yet. Finally, we suggest some strategies for policymakers to overcome the crisis and enhance community nutrition and health.

    Keywords: COVID-19, LockDown, Dietary changes, policy-making, surveillance

    Received: 23 Aug 2024; Accepted: 09 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Nikooyeh, Ghodsi, Amini, Rabiei, Rasekhi, Motlagh and Neyestani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tirang R. Neyestani, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute, Tehran, Iran

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.