Anxiety is associated with appetitive traits in university students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nutrition Journal

Table 3 Appetitive traits in the full sample and by anxiety symptom severity

	All Participants (n = 1243)		Mild to no anxiety symptoms (n = 598)		Moderate to severe anxiety symptoms^a (n = 645)			Effect Size
AEBQ Scales	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	p^b	Cohen’s d
Food approach traits
Hunger	3.10	0.75	2.98	0.74	3.21	0.75	< 0.01	0.31
Food responsiveness	3.18	0.75	3.08	0.73	3.27	0.75	< 0.01	0.25
Emotional over-eating	2.85	1.01	2.69	0.93	2.99	1.05	< 0.01	0.30
Enjoyment of food	4.14	0.80	4.24	0.71	4.04	0.86	< 0.01	0.25
Food avoidance traits
Satiety responsiveness	2.74	0.82	2.66	0.77	2.81	0.86	< 0.01	0.17
Emotional under-eating	3.11	0.96	3.03	0.89	3.18	1.02	< 0.01	0.16
Food fussiness	2.03	0.84	1.95	0.79	2.11	0.88	< 0.01	0.19
Slowness in eating	2.71	1.01	2.66	0.94	2.75	1.06	0.23	0.08

^aModerate to severe symptoms of anxiety defined as GAD-7 score > 10; ^bIndependent samples t-tests with equal variance comparing AEBQ scores by anxiety symptom severity category

ISSN: 1475-2891