Isolamento social: o impacto do consumo de fast-food.

Abstract

COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan, China and soon spread throughout the world, causing a public health problem. In 2020, the World Health Organization declared a state of "public health emergency of international concern" in which COVID-19 became a pandemic. To contain the spread of the disease, social isolation measures were decreed, however, these restrictions may have been responsible for several changes in the lifestyle of the general population, especially in eating habits, given that the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to a new reformulation in the eating practices of the subjects, such as the increased consumption of fast food and processed food through delivery, which has a great influence on the appearance of comorbidities such as obesity, arterial hypertension and diabetes, among others. Given this, an electronic questionnaire was applied through the Google+ tool (forms) with the aim of evaluating the consumption of fast foods during isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic. The

data obtained were treated using descriptive statistics. Where appropriate, associative chi- square tests were performed at the 5% level of significance (p<0.05). 173 people of both sexes

aged between 18 and 60 years participated in this research. Changes were observed in the eating habits of the individuals regarding the consumption of fast foods, in which the intake of these foods increased during the isolation period. Associated with this, the participants reported weight gain and the appearance of some chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Significant associations (p<0.05) were found between age and fast food consumption, suggesting that young people had greater changes in eating habits and gained more weight than older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given these results, it was possible to observe that the pandemic caused changes in the eating behavior of individuals, which led to an increase in the consumption of industrialized products. It was observed that although the individuals were aware of and correlated fast food with weight gain, the degree of knowledge was not able to modify the behavior of the participants. In this context, it is necessary to plan new food and nutrition education strategies aimed at this public to prevent the onset of chronic diseases.