Investigating the Covid-19 pandemic on dietary behaviour in Scotland and accompanying health and well-being impacts
Project Lead
Challenges
The health behaviour of people living in Scotland, in terms of the types of food bought, the amount of alcohol consumed and the amount of physical activity done, is subject to many influences, and the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected these behaviours. Early in the pandemic, Public Health Scotland stated: “Research to track changes in physical activity, diet and weight as COVID-19 control measures ease in the form of high-quality, longitudinal studies within the Scottish population using validated tools would be important to inform the development and targeting of policy in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is key that these studies are representative with respect to demographic characteristics.” Whilst studies are available to track such changes, most notably from Food Standards Scotland (FSS) via consumer tracking surveys, there is limited evidence on longer-term changes, and how different parts of the population were affected relative to others. In addition, whilst the effects of the pandemic on mental health are now well-known, the link with health behaviours is not as well established, either in Scotland or other parts of the UK. For these reasons, this project aimed to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic changed diets in Scotland, and whether there were any marked impacts on health and well-being. The findings aim to inform current and future policies that seek to change health behaviour within Scotland and the rest of the UK, particularly in relation to proposals on healthy diets being taken forward by the Scottish Government.
Questions
Solutions
This project examines the impact of COVID-19 on dietary behaviour in Scotland using longitudinal data. We focus on changes in individuals’ dietary behaviour (and accompanying impacts on mental health and life satisfaction) in comparison to pre-pandemic conditions and include several other observable characteristics in individuals’ lives, to control for changes in other important dimensions of individuals' lives.
Specifically, this project aims to:
- Quantify the change in dietary behaviour amongst adults aged 16 years of age or over in Scotland following the implementation of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures
- Understand the magnitude of accompanying changes in mental health and life satisfaction amongst those who reported changes in dietary behaviour
- Estimate the extent of differential impacts between different individuals and households in terms of socio-economic characteristics
- Calculate the implied monetary values associated with the changes in dietary behaviour and mental health
The project provides up-to-date evidence from a large nationally representative survey of the Scottish population regarding whether dietary behaviour has changed following the COVID-19 lockdown measures. In particular, whether changes were concentrated amongst particular socio-economic groups, and whether any changes have remained stable over time.
Project Partners
Progress
2022 / 2023
The Project initially focussed on Objective 1 (quantifying the change in dietary behaviour amongst adults aged 16 years and over) and Objective 3 (estimating the extent of differential impacts between different individuals and households in terms of socio-economic characteristics).
With regards to Objective 1, we find evidence of systematic differences in health behaviour between men and women, younger and older people, and people in employment:
- Fruit and vegetable intake: women significantly reduced their consumption in 2020 compared to men, and this decline continued into 2021.
- Alcohol consumption: older people (aged 50 years or over) were significantly less likely to report 4 or more days of alcohol consumption in a single week, compared to younger people (ages less than 50 years of age).
- Physical activity levels and overall healthy lifestyle (including higher fruit and vegetable intake, lower alcohol consumption, and higher physical activity levels): people in employment were significantly less physically active, and less likely to engage in an overall healthy lifestyle, compared to people not in employment or retired.
With regards to Objective 3, considering the direct survey responses, with no statistical adjustment tho take into account other factors such as income or employment, there were some changes in dietary behaviour in Scotland following the pandemic. More specifically, there was a small increase in fruit and vegetable consumption between the pre-pandemic period and July 2020 to January 2021. In addition, there was an increase in the number of days per week that alcohol was consumed, and a greater proportion of people reported high levels of use on single days (i.e., binge-drinking). The increase in fruit and vegetable consumption was predominantly in higher income households, whilst the increase in alcohol consumption was across all levels of income. However, after considering factors such as changes in income or employment over time, plus other factors, we found no significant changes in the number of days where fruit and vegetables were consumed nor changes in alcohol consumption. Further, we found no differences in changes in dietary behaviour between Scotland and the rest of the UK. We will therefore combine the data between Scotland and the rest of the UK, to increase sample size and therefore provide more robust estimates of differential impacts according to demographic or socio-economic characteristics. The remainder of the project then focussed on Objectives 2 and 4 (see the end of project report link below) which considered whether changes in health behaviour are associated with changes in mental health and assess the implied monetary values of mental health changes.
Knowledge exchange: Researchers at the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), University of Aberdeen and the University of Turin (Italy) are collaborating to address evidence gaps with regards to assessing how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed diets and other health behaviours in Scotland, how long-term these changes are and whether specific segments of the population were affected differently than others.
This project was completed on the 24th of July 2023. The end of project report can be found here.
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