The role of body mass index, healthy eating-related apps and educational activities on eating motives and behaviours among women during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross sectional study

Abstract

The COVID-19 related lockdown made it much more difficult for people to control their eating behaviours and body weight with the methods and means they had used before. This is reflected in reports that show that eating behaviours deteriorated significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic (including in Poland). Therefore, it is important to determine what factors may be conducive to healthy eating behaviours among people with different BMI. As previous studies show, the use of healthy eating related-apps and training programs may be a protective factor against the development of unhealthy eating behaviours. Therefore, it is worth checking whether their action will be a protective factor during COVID-19. The aim of this cross sectional study was to analyse whether the current use of healthy eating-related apps and previous participation in training in this field (educational activities) as well as body mass index may play a role in eating motives and behaviours among women during COVID-19. Our final sample included 1,447 women (age: M = 31.34 ± 11.05). Participants completed: the Eating Motivation Survey, the Emotional Overeating Questionnaire, the Mindful Eating Questionnaire, socio-demographic survey and questions about healthy eating-related apps and training (educational activities). Referring to the selected significant results, our study shows that during COVID-19, the use of healthy eating-related apps alone, as well as the use of apps and prior training participation promote healthy eating motives and behaviours. It suggests that promoting the use of healthy eating applications and the acquisition of knowledge and skills in this field could be one way of shaping resources that can be effectively used to deal with crisis situations.