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Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt

Food intake choice and amount might change with stress. However, this has not been examined among Egyptian students. We examined students’ stress levels, its correlation with their consumption of a range of food groups, and adherence to dietary guidelines. A cross sectional survey (N = 2810 undergra...

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Autores principales: El Ansari, Walid, Berg-Beckhoff, Gabriele
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26561825
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph121114164
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author El Ansari, Walid
Berg-Beckhoff, Gabriele
author_facet El Ansari, Walid
Berg-Beckhoff, Gabriele
author_sort El Ansari, Walid
collection PubMed
description Food intake choice and amount might change with stress. However, this has not been examined among Egyptian students. We examined students’ stress levels, its correlation with their consumption of a range of food groups, and adherence to dietary guidelines. A cross sectional survey (N = 2810 undergraduates at 11 faculties at Assiut University, Egypt) assessed two composite food intake pattern scores (one unhealthy: sweets, cakes, snacks; and a healthy one: fruits and vegetables), and two indicators of healthy eating (subjective importance of healthy eating; and dietary guideline adherence index). Multiple linear regression tested the associations of stress with two food intake pattern scores and two indicators of healthy eating, controlling for six potential confounders for the sample and separately for males and females. Higher perceived stress score was significantly associated with less frequent food intake of fruit and vegetables in males and females. The association was more pronounced among males than in females. No significant association was observed between the sweets cakes and snacks score and stress. Of the two indicators of healthy eating, the dietary guideline adherence index was not associated with stress, while the subjective judgment of healthy eating was consistently negatively associated with stress. Stress related decreased-eating was present. Recent studies suggest that stress could be associated with either decreased or increased eating depending on the study population, food group, and type of stressor. Further research is necessary to understand stress related over- and undereating.
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spelling pubmed-46616392015-12-10 Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt El Ansari, Walid Berg-Beckhoff, Gabriele Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Food intake choice and amount might change with stress. However, this has not been examined among Egyptian students. We examined students’ stress levels, its correlation with their consumption of a range of food groups, and adherence to dietary guidelines. A cross sectional survey (N = 2810 undergraduates at 11 faculties at Assiut University, Egypt) assessed two composite food intake pattern scores (one unhealthy: sweets, cakes, snacks; and a healthy one: fruits and vegetables), and two indicators of healthy eating (subjective importance of healthy eating; and dietary guideline adherence index). Multiple linear regression tested the associations of stress with two food intake pattern scores and two indicators of healthy eating, controlling for six potential confounders for the sample and separately for males and females. Higher perceived stress score was significantly associated with less frequent food intake of fruit and vegetables in males and females. The association was more pronounced among males than in females. No significant association was observed between the sweets cakes and snacks score and stress. Of the two indicators of healthy eating, the dietary guideline adherence index was not associated with stress, while the subjective judgment of healthy eating was consistently negatively associated with stress. Stress related decreased-eating was present. Recent studies suggest that stress could be associated with either decreased or increased eating depending on the study population, food group, and type of stressor. Further research is necessary to understand stress related over- and undereating. MDPI 2015-11-06 2015-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4661639/ /pubmed/26561825 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph121114164 Text en © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
El Ansari, Walid
Berg-Beckhoff, Gabriele
Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title_full Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title_fullStr Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title_full_unstemmed Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title_short Nutritional Correlates of Perceived Stress among University Students in Egypt
title_sort nutritional correlates of perceived stress among university students in egypt
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26561825
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph121114164
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