COVID-19, Nutrition and Lifestyle Factors in the Canadian Population

Date: Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 ET

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Speakers:
Stéphanie Chevalier, RD, PhD - McGill University
Didier Brassard, RD, MSc, PhD(c) - Université Laval

Moderated by: 
Daiva Nielsen, PhD - McGill University

Webinar Description: 

Stéphanie Chevalier: Eating habits and lifestyle behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic: the COVIDiet Study

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with waves of ensuing isolation measures affect usual eating and lifestyle habits to various degrees among individuals. The presentation will describe preliminary results from a cohort of 2021 adult participants recruited from May to December 2020 from all provinces of Canada, being followed every 3 months for a year.  Participants report on how the pandemic affects their eating habits, cooking skills, food security, body weight, physical activity, sleeping patterns and mental health.  Using a mobile application, food intake is tracked at each follow-up to assess nutrient adequacy and diet quality with the goal of identifying trends and contributing factors. 

Learning Objectives

• Recognize the changes in eating, physical activity and other lifestyle habits since the beginning of the pandemic in this cohort
• Explore possible factors associated to positive or negative changes in eating and lifestyle behaviors   

Didier Brassard: Changes in diet quality and food security among adults during the COVID-19–related early lockdown: results from NutriQuébec

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)–related early lockdown period has had a profound impact on all of human life’s activities worldwide. The mitigation measures implemented in most countries, combined with the shutdown of most industries including restaurants, have forced people to home confinement for many months. NutriQuébec is an open cohort of adults from Québec that initiated recruitment in June 2019. A substudy on COVID-19 ran from April to May 2020 and aimed at documenting the change in diet quality and in food insecurity observed during the COVID-19– related early lockdown. The goal of this presentation is to present the main findings of the NutriQuébec COVID-19 substudy. 

Learning Objectives

• To learn about changes in diet quality and eating-out occasions during the COVID-19-related early lockdown
• To learn about changes in food security during the COVID-19-related early lockdown, acknowledging limitations

About the Speakers:

Stéphanie Chevalier, RD, PhD - McGill University 
Stéphanie Chevalier is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at the School of Human Nutrition, McGill University, an Associate Member of the Department of Medicine and a Medical Scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.

Her main research area is protein metabolism and the role of dietary proteins in aging and certain diseases such as cancer, obesity and diabetes. Her research goal is to better understand the metabolic alterations leading to muscle mass and function loss and develop strategies to counteract it. Her work involves metabolic studies, clinical trials and data analysis of epidemiological studies.  

She led the Nutrition Axis of the Réseau québécois de recherche sur le vieillissement from 2013-2018 and participates in Canadian Nutrition Society, Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, and NuAge Study working groups.