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Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman

This paper aims to study the perceptions of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on behaviors related to diet and food shopping on a sample of 356 adults in Oman. The study is based on the results of an Arabic-language online survey conducted between September 15 and October 10, 2020, using the Surv...

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Autores principales: Ben Hassen, Tarek, El Bilali, Hamid, Allahyari, Mohammad S., Al Samman, Hazem, Marzban, Soroush
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8821884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35145946
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.779654
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author Ben Hassen, Tarek
El Bilali, Hamid
Allahyari, Mohammad S.
Al Samman, Hazem
Marzban, Soroush
author_facet Ben Hassen, Tarek
El Bilali, Hamid
Allahyari, Mohammad S.
Al Samman, Hazem
Marzban, Soroush
author_sort Ben Hassen, Tarek
collection PubMed
description This paper aims to study the perceptions of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on behaviors related to diet and food shopping on a sample of 356 adults in Oman. The study is based on the results of an Arabic-language online survey conducted between September 15 and October 10, 2020, using the Survey Monkey platform. The questionnaire had 25 questions (multiple options and one option), subdivided into three parts. Respondents were asked to disseminate the survey to their networks as part of the study's snowball sampling method. Descriptive statistics and various statistical tests (e.g., U-Mann Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square) have been used to evaluate the study results. The study showed a significant shift in the attitude and behavior of respondents regarding food and health. Indeed, the paper findings indicated (i) a shift to healthier diets, as shown by the fact that 45.5% of the participants increased their intake of fruits and vegetables, 42.4% ate more healthy foods, and 53.1% reduced their intake of unhealthy foods; (ii) an increase in the consumption of local products, owing to food safety concerns, with 25.8% of the cohort stating that they purchase more local food items; (iii) a shift in grocery shopping behaviors, especially with 28.1% of the participants buying more groceries online; (iv) the absence of panic buying in Oman, since 62.36% of the participants said they did not stockpile food items; and (v) a reduction of food waste. Indeed, 78.9% of the participants specified they were not wasting more food than average since the beginning of the pandemic, and 74.72% indicated they were more aware of how much food they were wasting. Surprisingly, COVID-19 appears to bring many beneficial adjustments in Oman to make food consumption more sustainable and healthier.
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spelling pubmed-88218842022-02-09 Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman Ben Hassen, Tarek El Bilali, Hamid Allahyari, Mohammad S. Al Samman, Hazem Marzban, Soroush Front Public Health Public Health This paper aims to study the perceptions of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on behaviors related to diet and food shopping on a sample of 356 adults in Oman. The study is based on the results of an Arabic-language online survey conducted between September 15 and October 10, 2020, using the Survey Monkey platform. The questionnaire had 25 questions (multiple options and one option), subdivided into three parts. Respondents were asked to disseminate the survey to their networks as part of the study's snowball sampling method. Descriptive statistics and various statistical tests (e.g., U-Mann Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square) have been used to evaluate the study results. The study showed a significant shift in the attitude and behavior of respondents regarding food and health. Indeed, the paper findings indicated (i) a shift to healthier diets, as shown by the fact that 45.5% of the participants increased their intake of fruits and vegetables, 42.4% ate more healthy foods, and 53.1% reduced their intake of unhealthy foods; (ii) an increase in the consumption of local products, owing to food safety concerns, with 25.8% of the cohort stating that they purchase more local food items; (iii) a shift in grocery shopping behaviors, especially with 28.1% of the participants buying more groceries online; (iv) the absence of panic buying in Oman, since 62.36% of the participants said they did not stockpile food items; and (v) a reduction of food waste. Indeed, 78.9% of the participants specified they were not wasting more food than average since the beginning of the pandemic, and 74.72% indicated they were more aware of how much food they were wasting. Surprisingly, COVID-19 appears to bring many beneficial adjustments in Oman to make food consumption more sustainable and healthier. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-01-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8821884/ /pubmed/35145946 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.779654 Text en Copyright © 2022 Ben Hassen, El Bilali, Allahyari, Al Samman and Marzban. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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) and the copyright owner(s) 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.
spellingShingle Public Health
Ben Hassen, Tarek
El Bilali, Hamid
Allahyari, Mohammad S.
Al Samman, Hazem
Marzban, Soroush
Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title_full Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title_fullStr Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title_full_unstemmed Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title_short Observations on Food Consumption Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oman
title_sort observations on food consumption behaviors during the covid-19 pandemic in oman
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8821884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35145946
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.779654
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