{"doi":"10.3390/nu13030901","title":"COVID-19 Stress and Food Intake: Protective and Risk Factors for Stress-Related Palatable Food Intake in U.S. Adults","abstract":"(1) Background: The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused disruptions to what people eat, but the pandemic's impact on diet varies between individuals. The goal of our study was to test whether pandemic-related stress was associated with food intake, and whether relationships between stress and intake were modified by appetitive and cognitive traits. (2) Methods: We cross-sectionally surveyed 428 adults to examine current intake frequency of various food types (sweets/desserts, savory snacks, fast food, fruits, and vegetables), changes to food intake during the pandemic, emotional overeating (EOE), cognitive flexibility (CF), and COVID-19-related stress. Models tested associations of stress, EOE, and CF with food intake frequency and changes to intake. (3) Results: Models demonstrated that the positive relationship between stress and intake of sweets/desserts was stronger with higher EOE, while the positive relationship between stress and intake of chips/savory snacks was weaker with higher CF. Higher EOE was associated with greater risk of increased intake of palatable foods. (4) Conclusions: Findings suggest that emotional overeating may escalate stress-associated intake of high-sugar foods, and cognitive flexibility may attenuate stress-associated intake of high-fat foods. Differences in appetitive and cognitive traits may explain changes to and variability in food intake during COVID-19, and efforts to decrease emotional overeating and encourage cognitive flexibility could help lessen the effect of COVID-19-related stress on energy dense food intake.","journal":"Nutrients","year":2021,"id":157834,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":48,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8979,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":376961,"name":"Gita Thapaliya","orcid":"0000-0002-9586-8851","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":376963,"name":"Elena Jansen","orcid":"0000-0002-6051-4148","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":626987,"name":"Anahys Aghababian","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":295699,"name":"Kimberly Smith","orcid":"0000-0001-7414-9164","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":295703,"name":"Susan Carnell","orcid":"0000-0001-6200-3635","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":376964,"name":"Jennifer R. Sadler","orcid":"0000-0001-6641-2196","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":76,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:44:21.786014Z","pmid":"33802066","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}