If you’ve experienced unwelcome weight changes in the past year, leading food economists believe you’re not alone.
A new study by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab, shared exclusively with the Free Press ahead of a wide release today, suggests nearly three in five Canadians have put on more than a few pounds in the past year — mostly due to the stress of COVID-19.
Researchers surveyed almost 10,000 people from province to province this month, asking them about their wellness and food habits to measure how well they’ve been coping with stress generated by the public-health crisis.
“The results are shocking and definitely show us that we’ve actually paid a pretty big long-term price during the pandemic,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a food management professor at Dalhousie University, who led the study with a team of experts.
“Clearly, as people were dealing with stress about everything else around them, their food habits changed. And even while we might be taking our COVID health precautions seriously, Canadians have been putting the health aspect of their eating on the back seat.”
It’s normal to gain some weight as people get older because of decreasing lipid turnover in fat tissue when someone ages, Charlebois explained, but people across the country have gained more weight “undesirably and unintentionally than any other period we’ve ever seen” before.
In fact, researchers believe, younger people have been impacted in greater proportions than older generations. And results not only vary by age, they also vary by gender and geographic location.
A total of 83 per cent of millennials and 82 per cent of generation Z believe they’re more stressed than before the pandemic, and tend to eat or snack more as a result. In contrast, 78 per cent of generation X and 68 per cent of baby boomers shared those sentiments.
Women (at 53 per cent) are more inclined to stress-eat than men (at 47.1 per cent). And 76 per cent of women said they gained some weight, versus 71 per cent of men.
Charlebois believes much of these trends are because of the lack of a normal day-to-day structure during the pandemic, citing how only 8.8 per cent Canadians said that they’ve been able to manage mealtimes properly. He also said the lack of exercise and regular activity has caused a notable impact.
“Many of us lost our daily food bearings because we just weren’t doing things we were used to anymore — this is still all completely new to us and is changing from one month or even week to the next,” he said. “Meal planning or management went completely out the gate, because you never know whether you’re physically supposed to go to work or school and when you aren’t.”
But the most significant personal stressor contributing to weight changes has been self-isolation from friends and family. A total of 67 per cent of Canadians see this as the primary reason why they hit the fridge to stress-eat during extended bouts of loneliness.
“There’s so many layers here, and I mean, it makes sense why you need comfort through comfort food when you’re lonely,” said Charlebois.
The province where the highest number of people who believe their eating habits have changed is Newfoundland and Labrador (at 84 per cent), followed by Nova Scotia (81 per cent) and Ontario (at 74 per cent).
Manitoba is among the lower rung of weight fluctuations, where 59 per cent of people reported a change. Of those respondents in the province, 39.3 per cent gained between six and eight pounds since last spring; 14.3 per cent gained between 11 and 15 pounds; and 12.8 per cent gained from 16 to 20 pounds.
“At the end of the day, one thing is clear: people will continue to struggle with eating habits until the pandemic is over,” said Charlebois. “And all of this will come back to bite us if we don’t start addressing this right now on a personal and collective level.”
