NUTRITIONAL CONDITIONS AND EATING HABITS OF THOSE ATTENDING A SPAIN NUTRITIONAL CONSULTATION WITHIN THE WORKPLACE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

Background: Feeding behavior and nutritional condition of workers seem to have changed during the pandemic, tending towards a gain in body fat, loss of muscle mass, and a decrease in the quality of their diet. The objective is to know the nutritional status and quality of diet of a sample of company workers, during and post-confinement due to the 2019-nCoV Pandemic. Material and methods: It is a cross-sectional descriptive study based on the data collection of 634 workers who voluntarily attended the consultation of a Dietitian-Nutritionist within your company during pandemic. It has been evaluated: the nutritional status, adherence to the Mediterranean diet by the PREDIMED questionnaire, and blood tests and related pathologies. For the statistical analysis the program IBM SPSS 24  was used.Results: The 55.21% of the sample had excess weight (40.22% overweight and 14.99% obesity) according to the BMI; 62.15% had an ICT> 0.50; 64.04% excess body fat according to Bray,1998 and 55.52% according to Gallagher, 2000. In addition, 29.34% had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Subjects with less adherence to this dietary pattern had higher BMI (P = 0.007) and percentage of body fat according to Bray (p = 0.007). 39.27% were sedentary, coinciding with those who had higher ICT (0.002) and higher BMI (p = 0.003). Conclusion: The prevalence of overweight and obesity was alarmingly high, especially in men. Greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet according to the PREDIMED questionnaire and greater practice of physical activity was associated with a better nutritional condition in general. The importance of the figure of the Dietitian-Nutritionist in the companies.