A Qualitative Study Exploring Management of Food Intake in the United Kingdom During the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has impacted dietary quality through increased emotional eating and extended time spent at home, as well as instances of panic buying due to uncertainty over food availability. We recruited an opportunistic sample of 40 adults living in the United Kingdom (Female = 25; Mean age = 41.9 years) (SD = 14.4) without any prior history of eating disorders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in June 2020 and focused on the impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on eating habits and experiences of panic buying. The data were transcribed and organized using the softwares Otter and Quirkos, respectively. Reflexive thematic analysis identified positive and negative changes to eating habits. Overall, themes highlighted that effective organization was vital to manage food purchases and consumption due to a reduced shopping frequency. However, overconsumption frequently occurred due to boredom and ease of accessing energy dense foods, which had negative implications for weight and body image. After indulging, participants attempted to revert to prior eating habits and adhere to a nutritious diet. Many also expressed the importance of having enough food to feed families, which was often reported as a reason for buying extra supplies. Understanding the long-term impacts of changes to eating habits that account for the novel coronavirus context is required to preserve health and prevent unintended changes to weight.

Identifying a New Social Intervention Model of Panic Buying Under Sudden Epidemic

COVID-19 that broke out at the end of 2019 continues to spread globally, with frequent occurrence of variant disease strains, thus epidemic prevention and control become a kind of routine job. At present, due to the prevention and control measures such as maintaining social distance and community blockades, there is a boom in material purchases in many places, which not only seriously endangers social order and public environmental safety, but also easily leads to the interruption of the supply chain and the shortage of social materials. This article aims to study the intervention methods to curb the spread and spread of panic buying behavior. Firstly, through crawler technology and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic model, this article analyzes the intervention measures taken by various social forces in China to curb the spread of panic buying, and summarizes the multi-channel intervention measures including online and offline forms. Secondly, through the multi-Agent Monte Carlo method, the targeted intervention mechanism is supplemented in each propagation link of the panic buying propagation model, and a new social intervention model of panic buying under sudden epidemic is constructed. Then, through MATLAB modeling and simulation, the main factors affecting panic buying intervention are discussed. The simulation results show that: (1) The single plan with the best intervention effect is the supply monitoring. While the official response can play an immediate inhibitory effect, but it is affected by credibility and timeliness. The intervention effect of psychological counseling is limited, and it generally needs to be used in combination with other measures. (2) The combination strategy with the best intervention effect is "supply monitoring + official response + psychological counseling," and the worst is "information review and guidance + psychological counseling." Supply monitoring is a key measure to curb panic buying. At the same time, "information review and guidance" will have a certain counter-effect in the combined strategy. Finally, the effectiveness and universality of the proposed model are verified by examples of China and Britain.