Eating Behavior and Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Background

Eating behavior encompasses food consumption, selection, and choice. This behavior involves phylogenetic and ontogenetic factors, and an ability to control food intake through physiological mechanisms such as neurotransmitters, hormones, sensory receptors, and metabolism. External stimuli (such as the organoleptic properties of food), psychological pressure, and the social environment also affect food choices. Although behavior is an individual action, food exposure and responsiveness to food are conditioned by social structure and particular cultural contexts.

Food occupies a privileged place in human life and in the formation and maintenance of social ties. In this sense, eating behavior can be affected by individual conditions, personal characteristics, and levels of psychological distress. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to food and nutrition insecurity, eating behavior was affected by movement restrictions and recommendations for physical distance. The changes in sociability and conviviality have altered the forms of commensality, eating habits, and ways of preparing and consuming food and drinks. The subjective experience of eating and the quantity and quality of the diet may have also been altered by the psychological stress experienced in the pandemic.

Considering that food can transmit affection and that eating behavior involves mechanisms responsive to social pressures, we would welcome research that elucidates how mental health issues during the pandemic, including depression, anxiety, fear, and stress, interfere with or modulate eating behavior. We are interested in studies that examine the correlation between mental health and eating behavior, including studies of eating habits and consumption patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as research on eating disorders. In addition, we would welcome studies that answer how subjective well-being affects eating behavior; or that demonstrate associations between mental health, lifestyles, and habits, including aspects of diet.

Original articles, systematic reviews, clinical trials, intervention studies, and case studies that answer the question of how mental health affects eating behavior in situations of psychological distress and pressure, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and that address all the above-mentioned aspects of eating behavior will be accepted for peer review. We also welcome methodological studies that provide psychometric instruments to assess emotional aspects of eating behavior including the development and validation or cross-cultural adaptation of new measures.

Keywords: Eating behavior, Eating habits, Emotions, Mental health, Pandemic, COVID-19

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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