Dietary life and mukbang- and cookbang-watching status of university students majoring in food and nutrition before and after COVID-19 outbreak

Purpose: With increased time spent at home due to prolonged online classes, this study sought to determine how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted the mukbang- and cookbang-watching patterns and dietary life of college students. Methods: All students majoring in food and nutrition (FN) at a college in Gyeonggi, Korea, participated in the survey in April 2019 (M/F = 36/106) and June 2020 (M/F -37/130) and data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0. Results: Compared to students responding in 2019, those in 2020 reported more frequently eating alone (p < 0.01) and cooking (p < 0.01), and evaluated their diets better regarding pleasant mealtimes atmosphere (p < 0.05), moderation in drinking (p < 0.05), and not consuming excessively delivery foods (p < 0.001), processed foods (p < 0.01), foods with animal fat (p < 0.01), salty foods (p < 0.01), and sweets (p < 0.01). Although the proportion of respondents who answered that they watched mukbang and cookbang at least occasionally did not change, greater proportions of respondents reported watching both genres frequently (p < 0.001, respectively) and spending less time/day in watching mukbang (p < 0.05) in 2020 vs. 2019. While they evaluated the effect of mukbang- and cookbang-watching on overall diet similarly, the proportion of respondents that reported feeling as though mukbang-watching prompted them to eat more of less-desirable foods decreased from 54.3% to 41.5% (p < 0.05). Diet improvement of participants due to COVID-19 resulted in that the association between frequent mukbang-watching and unhealthier dietary habits in 2019 was not shown in 2020. Conclusion: Our results suggest that the prolonged at-home stays due to COVID-19 might have improved many aspects of diet and decreased undesirable effect of frequent mukbang-watching in case of college students majoring in FN.