COVID-19 and nutrition: the need for initiatives to promote healthy eating and prevent obesity in childhood

• Autor(a) principal: Maciel, Bruna Leal Lima
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Ribeiro, Karla Danielly da Silva, Garcia, Lígia Rejane Siqueira, Dametto, Juliana Fernandes dos Santos, Assunção, Débora Gabriela Fernandes
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRN
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/57711; http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/chi.2020.0121
• topic: COVID-19; Nutrition; Healthy eating; Obesity; Childhood

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has brought several individual and collective protection measures to contain the spread of its transmission, such as social distancing and lockdown. Although extremely necessary, these measures can affect the activities in businesses, restaurants, street markets, and even the closing of borders. Therefore, for many individuals, usual shopping and eating routines have been completely changed. In addition to providing a scenario of economic and social instability, lockdown can affect the food supply chain and generate a situation of food and nutrition insecurity in different regions of the world. Thus, undernutrition and obesity can increase, due to limited access to food, concern about the lack of basic items, limited cooking capacity, a more sedentary lifestyle, and changes in food purchasing, eating behaviors, and perceptions about food safety. The increased consumption of processed foods with high caloric content, rich in saturated fats, sugars, and refined carbohydrates, longer shelf life, easier access, and use, especially in children, may contribute to increasing the prevalence of obesity in times of COVID-19