DIETARY HABITS OF YOUTH DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THEIR ADHERENCE TO MEDITERRANEAN DIET | ..

Covid-19 infection is more likely in people who have compromised immune systems.

As a result, individuals must maintain a sufficient and well-balanced diet during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Following the Mediterranean diet, which is well known for boosting the immune system, can play an important role in disease prevention. In this regard, the aim of this study is to evaluate youth's nutritional awareness levels and Mediterranean diet quality indexes (KIDMED), as well as their dietary patterns' compliance with the Mediterranean diet, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Online questionnaires were used to collect data for the study. A total of 292 volunteers took part in the study. There were three sections of the questionnaire forms. The first section consisted of questions about the participants' demographic details. The second section included 20 questions aimed at evaluating the level of nutritional awareness among the study's participants.Finally, in the third section of the survey, the Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED) was used to answer 16 questions.The nutritional awareness scores of the participants showed a statistical disparity by sex(male=77.3513.49, female=80.7610.10) (t=2.845, p0.05), but there was no difference between sexes in KIDMED scores (male=5.472.37, female=5.702.33) (t=0.836, p>0.05).The Mediterranean diet quality of 15.41% of the youth in the study is very poor (only 3 points), the diet quality of 62.67 percent is average/needs improvement (47 points), and 21.92 percent of the participants has an acceptable level of diet quality (only 8 points). The findings of the study show that young people's diets are of poor quality, and that there is a connection between nutritional awareness and eating habits.

Please see the link - https://ikprress.org/index.php/JOBARI/article/view/6097