Eating behavior and anxiety in young adult women: similar situations in different contexts.
mental health, food craving, emotional eating, oral contraceptive, menstrual cycle, COVID-19.
Current life conditions can negatively affect mental health and cause changes dietary
and eating behavior. It is important to underscore that anxiety and changes in eating
pattern are also symptoms attributed to the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. These
situations that compromise emotional health are usually associated with a propensity to
desiring and consuming ―tasty‖ foods with high levels of sugar, fat, and calories, as this
eating pattern possibly interacts with the central reward pathways, causing a pleasant
and comforting experience, regulating and reducing negative emotions. This present
study to investigate anxiety and some eating behaviors in young adult women,
considering the use of oral contraceptives, the presence of premenstrual symptoms and
the COVID-19 pandemic. With the exception of emotional eating there was no
influence of the use of oral contraceptives on the other variables. Differences were also
identified in scores of anxiety, craving for sweet foods and emotional eating according
to the presence of premental symptoms and, in general, the pandemic positively
impacted the anxiety and eating behavior of the participants. In conclusion, this study
provides new and important information about the complexity of factors involved in the
etiology of anxiety and variations in eating behaviors, highlighting the importance of
studying different environments and different contexts, as these can generate different
responses in people to similar situations.