The Effect of Stress on Eating in Undergraduates-- Final

Running head: THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STRESS AND EATING 1

Is Stress Eating You? The Correlation between Stress and Eating Habits in Undergraduate

Students

Kayla Elizabeth Hanzsek-Brill

University of Minnesota

STRESS AND EATING HABITS

Abstract

Research on the correlation between stress and eating habits has shown that an increase in stress

correlates with the increase of consumption of carbohydrates, sugars, and fats. However,

previous research has not looked at changes in consumption of other food groups in relation to

stress. The purpose of this study was to see if eating habits deviate from normal standards more

as stress increases. Undergraduate students responded to a survey about eating habits and

completed the Perceived Stress Scale to obtain information about food group consumption and

stress levels between each respondent. There was not a significant correlation between changes

from normalized eating and increased stress levels. While the results of this study may not

indicate a relationship, shortcomings of this study could be improved in further research

endeavors to see if there is indeed a correlation between eating habits and perceived stress levels.

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Is Stress Eating You? The Correlation between Stress and Eating Habits in Undergraduate

Students

When people become stressed, other areas of their lives are likely to be affected. This

may include personal relationships, work productivity, or self-care. Undergraduate students

frequently feel pressure to do well in school, as well as be involved in campus groups, work, or

volunteer outside of time in the classroom and studying. Along with the stress of classes and

studying, these outside activities from school can increase levels of stress within undergraduates.

The level of stress in a student can affect his or her eating habits. When stress levels are higher

in students, they are likely to stray from balanced eating and instead consume higher amounts of

sugars, carbohydrates, and fats (Kim, Yang, Kim, & Lim, 2013). For our study, stress is defined

as levels of anxiety caused by daily stressors (school, work, and family), as measured by the

Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). The PSS-10 is a widely used scale that is able to detect levels

of perceived stress in people, and it has been shown to be a reliable and valid test for identifying

stress and anxiety. When a student is stressed, they may be less likely to have balanced eating

habits. Balanced eating is when a person is meeting dietary needs as outlined by a registered

dietician. Balanced eating includes factors of number of servings of each food group and

number of meals and snacks eaten per day (Hoolihan, February 25, 2016, personal

communication; CNPP, 2016). Learning how eating habits in students are affected by stress can

lead to better education methods about having a balanced diet. Nutritional education is critical

because poor dietary habits have an adverse effect on physical and mental health (Zahra, Ford, &

Jodrell, 2013).

Research shows that high stress levels lead to poor eating behaviors. When stress levels

are low, diet self-efficacy is high, and when stress levels are high, diet self-efficacy is low

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(Nastaskin & Fiocco, 2015). Deviation from normalized eating will increase as stress levels

increase, and this is seen across the general global population. However, while this affects men,

women are more likely to have disordered eating patterns when reporting high levels of

perceived stress (Ball, Lee, & Brown, 1999). Stress and poor eating habits can also affect

physical health. When stress levels are higher in a student, they are more likely to become ill

(Roddenberry & Renk, 2010). If the body does not have the sufficient macronutrients, vitamins,

and minerals for proper functioning, the chances of physical illness increase. Poor eating habits,

especially related to stress, can compromise a student’s health (Kim, Yang, Kim, & Lim, 2013).

Previous research has examined at the consumption of sugars, carbohydrates, and fats in

relation to stress, showing that the consumption of these food groups tended to rise as stress

levels rose (Kim, Yang, Kim, & Ling, 2013; Finch & Tomiyama, 2015), yet these studies neglect

the other food groups: vegetables, proteins, fruits, and dairy. We are interested in food intake as

a whole, and the correlation to stress levels in college students, with all food groups factored into

eating habits. Our study will examine consumption of all food groups and the correlation

between healthy or unhealthy eating patterns and stress levels. Some food groups will likely

rise, such as carbohydrates, based on our understanding of past research and literature; however,

we want to see if the increased consumption rates of food is consistent across all food groups, if

these consumption rates stay at baseline normal, or if these other food groups fall in intake.

Understanding how daily eating habits are affected by stress can help improve nutritional

education for college students.

College students completed a questionnaire that asked the average number of meals and

snacks, as well of the number of servings in a food group, they consume in a typical day. These

data will then be compared to balanced eating guidelines according to the standards set by the

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Center of Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP). Comparisons will be made based on the

deviations from these standards. The questionnaire will also ask questions about perceived

stress, as measured by the PSS-10. We hypothesize that when college students report higher

perceived stress levels, they will also report frequent unbalanced eating habits, deviating from

the standards outlined by the CNPP. Unbalanced eating habits will correlate with higher stress

levels; as stress levels increase, so will the scores of deviated eating behaviors.

Method

Participants

Seventy-eight participants, 68 females and 10 males, took the survey asking about eating

habits and stress levels. Participants ranged from ages 18 through 39 (M=20.1, sd=2.44) and all

were undergraduate students. The racial demographics of survey responders was 76.9%

Caucasian/white, 1.3% African-American, 16.7% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 3.8% Latino, and

1.3% Other. Females were 87.2% (n=68) of the respondents, and males were 12.8% (n=10) of

the respondents.

Materials

For the survey, we developed our questions about food intake based on the guidelines

outlined by a registered dietician and the CNPP (Hoolihan, February 25, 2016, personal

communication; CNPP, 2016). There were two questions asked about the number of meals and

snacks eaten a day, as well as six queries to determine the number of servings of each food group

eaten per day, accompanied with an info graph and written descriptions of what a serving of each

of those food groups is (see Appendix A). These were ranked on a relative scale based on the

number of servings of each food group. The scale for meals and snacks was ranked zero to six or

more, with the baseline of normalized eating as outlined by the CNPP. For carbohydrates, the

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scale was from 0 to 13 or more servings, with six to eight servings as baseline for normal. All

other food groups (protein, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and fats) were measured on a scale from

zero to seven or more, with varying baseline levels based on the guidelines given by the CNPP

for a 2,000 calorie per day diet (CNPP, 2016). We also measured the number of snacks and

meals consumed per day. A snack contains one or two food groups, and a meal includes three or

more food groups (Hoolihan, February 25, 2016, personal communication).

We also used the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10; see Appendix B) to measure the stress

levels of participants. This includes 10 questions asking about reactions and emotions to

different events and stressors in the past month. The rating scale ranged from zero to four, with

zero meaning no stress was felt over a situation, and four meaning stress was felt very often over

a situation.

Procedure

The survey was administered online, distributed by social media and a classroom forum

on the class webpage. We began by giving participants an informed consent form to read and

acknowledge that they have agreed to participate (see Appendix C). After they gave consent,

they then confirmed that they are an undergraduate student, and we administered the

questionnaire asking about eating habits and then stress levels. They were also asked about their

demographic information (see Appendix D). Once the questionnaire was completed, the

participants were debriefed (see Appendix E). The debriefing provided contact information for

the National Eating Disorder Association and the National Alliance on Mental Health’s hotlines.

Results

To score eating habits and deviation from normalized food group consumption levels, we

scored the food group serving amounts and number of meals and snacks using a Likert scale, and

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later using the absolute values of those scored. For example, if a person ate the normal amount

of protein in a day, the two servings per day would score as zero. On the other hand, if a person

chose either a zero or four or more, they would both score as two, because it is a two-serving

deviation from the recommended amount. All scores from each food group were added together

to give the food deviation score.

For the Perceived Stress Scores, we used the scoring scale provided by the PSS-10

questionnaire. Four questions have reversed scoring, meaning that zero scores as four, one

scores as three, continuing this pattern until four scores as zero. The six remaining questions are

positively scored. These scores were added together for the perceived stress score.

Once the food deviation score and perceived stress score were found, we conducted a

correlational test. Results indicated that eating habits and stress levels were not significantly

correlated, r(76)=0.167, p=0.144. From the scatterplot (see Figure 1), it can be seen that there is

a weak correlation.

Discussion

The results did not support our hypothesis that stress levels and deviating eating

behaviors would positively correlate. While it has been shown that high stress levels correlate

negatively with diet self-efficacy (Nastaskin & Fiocco, 2015), and that a rise in stress correlates

with a rise in consumption of carbohydrates and fats (Kim, Yang, Kim, & Ling, 2013; Finch &

Tomiyama, 2015), our results are not consistent with these previous findings. This may be due

to a smaller sample size (n=78), selected by convenience sampling, with a sample size

disproportionate to the United States’ percentage of male or female students enrolled. In 2008,

42.7% of college students were male, and 56.3% were female (Borzelleca, 2012), whereas in our

survey, there was a disparity between the gender of the respondents and the gender of the overall

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population of undergraduate students. In 2011, the University of Minnesota system of schools

had a racial makeup of 1.5% students identifying as American Indian, 6.9% as Asian, 0.01% as

Hawaiian (which we included as Pacific Islander), 3.5% as African American, 2.1% as Hispanic,

9.0% as International (which we did not include as a racial or ethnic identity), 71.0% as White,

and 5.7% were unknown (http://oir.umn.edu). In our study, there were differentiations from

these data. Differences from larger demographic analyses show that our sample was not

representative, which may explain why trends in the correlation were not consistent in

comparison to previous research similar to our study.

A problem to self-reporting through an online survey is that it is possible that respondents

did not fully understand serving sizes, which could change how they reported the servings per

food group. Self-reporting can be problematic, because participants may have tried to make their

eating habits look better to the researchers. Had we run this study by interview, we would have

been able to show serving sizes and explain the definition of a serving if there were any doubts

had by the respondent. Having more consistent answers may have led to a stronger correlation.

The results may have also shown a stronger correlation if we had the time to collect food logs for

a week or two for each participant so that we researchers could determine the number of servings

of each food group objectively.

Although our study did not reach the same conclusions as the current body of literature

demonstrating a correlation between stress levels and eating habits, there are ways in which this

study could improve so that future research measuring the same correlation between stress levels

and eating habits could show a stronger relationship. Further research should use different

survey methods and obtain a more representative sample of the population to investigate how

perceived stress and deviated eating behaviors. Understanding how stress and eating habits

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correlate could improve nutritional education for undergraduate students; reducing stress and

creating better eating habits can lead to better health in students.

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References

Ball, K., Lee, C., & Brown, W. (1999). Psychological stress and disordered eating: An

exploratory study with young Australian women. Women and Health, 29:2, 1-15. doi:

10.1300/J013v29n02_01

Borzelleca, D. (2012). The Male-Female Ratio in College. Retrieved April 13, 2016, from

http://www.forbes.com

Campus and Unit Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity for Fall 2011. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016,

from http://www.oir.umn.edu

Finch, L., & Tomiyama, A. (2015). Comfort eating, psychological stress, and depressive

symptoms in young adult women. Elsevier, 95, 239-244. doi:

10.1016/j.appet.2015.07.017

Kim, Y., Yang, H., Kim, A., & Lim, Y. (2013). Academic stress levels were positively

associated with sweet food consumption among Korean high-school students. Nutrition,

29, 213-218. doi: 10.1016/j.nut.2012.08.05

MyPlate Daily Checklist [Pamphlet]. (2016). Washington, D.C.: Center for Nutrition Policy and

Promotion.

Nastaskin, R., & Fiocco, A. (2015). A survey of diet self-efficacy and food intake in students

with high and low levels of perceived stress. Nutrition Journal, 14, 42. doi:

http://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-015-0026-z

Roddenberry, A., & Renk, K. (2010). Locus of control and self-efficacy: Potential mediators of

stress, illness, and utilization of health services in college students. Child Psychiatry &

Human Development, 41, 353-370. doi: 10.1007/s10578-010-0173-6

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Zahra, J., Ford, T., & Jodrell, D. (2013). Cross-sectional survey of daily junk food consumption,

irregular eating, mental and physical health and parenting style of British secondary

school children. Child: Care, Health and Development, 40, 481-491. doi:

10.1111/cch.12068

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Appendix A

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STRESS AND EATING HABITS 13


Appendix B

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Appendix C

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Appendix D

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Appendix E

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Figure 1

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Figure 1: The Coefficient of Determination is r2=0.029, showing a weak correlation.

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The Effect of Stress on Eating in Undergraduates-- Final

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