Association between food consumption and quality of life in university students: a multicenter study in Brazil

To evaluate the association between food consumption, according to the extent and purpose of food processing, and the quality of life of university students from different fields of knowledge.

Multicenter cross-sectional study with students from eight Brazilian universities. Data were collected between October 2021 and February 2022 through a self-administered online questionnaire. Quality of life was assessed using the WHOQOL-BREF and categorized as high (> 25th percentile) and low (≤ 25th percentile) for each of the four domains. Food consumption assessed by questionnaire with categorical variables of food frequency, according to the Nova classification, whose scores ranged from 0 (best) to 48 (worst diet quality), divided into distribution quartiles. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression was performed.

Of the 8,650 university students evaluated, the majority were female, aged between 18 and 20. Using multivariate logistic regression, students with poorer diet quality (students in the highest quartile of ultra-processed food consumption) were more likely to have poorer quality of life in all domains, especially in the Physical (OR=2.49; 95%CI=2.16-2.88) and Psychological (OR=2.40; 95%CI=2.08-2.76) domains compared to students with better diet quality.

University students with poor diet quality were more likely to have a lower quality of life in all four domains.