Evaluation of eating habits and use of food supplements according to awareness levels of health faculty students during the pandemic

The research was conducted to evaluate the relationship between eating habits and dietary supplement use of health sciences students and their awareness levels during Covid-19. For this purpose, a questionnaire including nutritional habits, supplement usage, and Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ-30) were applied to 241 students aged ≥18 who were actively studying at Yeditepe University Faculty of Health Sciences. Since distance education was started due to the pandemic, an online questionnaire was applied to the participants. 62.6% of the participants consisted of Nutrition and Dietetics, 19.1% Nursing, 18.3% Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation students. According to the MEQ-30 score averages, all of the students were at a high level of awareness, and Nutrition and Dietetics students had higher awareness levels compared to other departments (p<0.05). 120 students with higher awareness ate healthier during the pandemic process. 66.4% of the participants think some dietary supplements are beneficial and 23.7% of the participants used dietary supplements. The majority of participants who use dietary supplements were Nutrition and Dietetics students. The difference between the awareness levels of those who use dietary supplements and those who do not was insignificant (p>0.05) but the effect of the awareness level on the use of dietary supplements could not be observed. 38.6% of the students using dietary supplements started to use it with the pandemic. The most commonly used dietary supplements were vitamin D and C, and the majority used dietary supplements to protect and maintain current health. During Covid-19, changes were observed in students' eating habits and dietary supplement use.