Impact of stress on diet of college students

The transition to college can be exciting but stressful. Previous studies have found that students gain a lot of weight as well as make bad food choices while in school. However, there is not enough information about how stress impacts the diet of college students This study seeks to find the impact that stress has on the diet of college students. An anonymous survey was sent to ONU students. The population of focus was students ages 18 and over. The Perceived Stress Scale was used to measure stress and a food frequency questionnaire was used to measure diet. The results of the Pearson’s correlation indicated that that there was no significant relationship between perceived stress scale and fruit and vegetables (r (78) = .11, p = .32). The results also indicated that there was no significant correlation between perceived stress and consumption of fries. (r (78) = .03, p = .78). Even though no correlation between stress and diet was found in this study, it can serve as a reference for future research looking at diet or stress.