Effect of COVID-19 lockdown on adherence to the Mediterranean Diet among participants in a health-promotion program

Abstract

En esta comunicación se presentan los hallazgos relativos a la adherencia a la dieta mediterránea del programa de promoción de hábitos saludables desarrollado por Sanitas "Healthy Cities"

Diet habits have increasingly gained attention from the scientific community because of their potential consequences for health. In this line, the Mediterranean diet has been linked to a number of health benefits, inclu-ding reduced mortality and incidence of cardiovascular disease as well as a relatively high level of self-rated health. The main aim of the present work is to analyze how adherence to the Medi-terranean diet among workers participating in the Healthy Cities program have been affected during confinement, i.e., WFH due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample was composed of Spanish office employees participating in the Healthy Cities scheme developed by Sanitas (https://corporativo.sanitas.es/sobre-nosotros/sostenibilidad/healthy-cities/ accessed on 3 March 2021). There were 2491 employees who com-pleted an online survey containing the questionnaires used in the present study before the pandemic. Pearson χ2 tests, together with the analysis of the adjusted residuals, revealed that in all of the items the participants displayed a pattern closer to the Mediterranean diet features during pandemic than before. More specifically, there was an increase in the number of participants reporting that the olive oil was the main culinary lipid used, as well as an increase in the intake of olive oil, vegetables, fruit, red meat, wine, legumes, fish and seafood, tree nuts and sofrito sauce. On the other hand, participants intake of butter, cream and margarine, or comercial sweets decreased during the pandemic. Overall, the adherence to the mediterranean diet was higher during the pandemic than before. The main strength of the present study is having data gathering just before the pandemic, when it was not possible to foresee that situation. This allowed us to compare the study variables before and after the pandemic. Furthermore, it is focused on a specific population (Spanish employees at-tending a health promotion program) which contributes to the sample ho-mogeneity, As stated below, this could be both a strength and a limitation. This study has some limitations that must be mentioned. While this is one of the very few studies assessing the impact of the pandemic with data gat-hered both before and during the pandemic, only 297 participants out of the initial 2491 completed the second wave of questionnaires.