Stress at work, nutritional status and food behavior: study with employees from a university center

Introduction: The great competitiveness in the current job market, poor diet, stress and sedentary lifestyle are factors that cause problems in workers' health. Objective: Evaluate job stress, nutritional status and eating behavior in employees of a University Center in Fortaleza-CE. Methods: In the cross-sectional, quantitative and analytical study, the Dutch questionnaire on eating behavior, the work stress scale, a socioeconomic questionnaire, in addition to the calculation of BMI were applied. Data processing was performed using IBM SPSS version 23.0 and variables were described as means, standard deviation, simple frequencies and percentages. The normality of quantitative variables was verified by the Shapiro-Wilk test. To investigate possible associations between variables, Student's t test was used at a significance level of 5%. Results: The sample consisted of 58 employees of both sexes and aged between 20 and 54 years of which 53.4% have not completed higher education and 56.9% have gross family income up to R$ 2,500.00. It was observed that 65.5% were overweight and the predominant eating behavior was emotional intake (44.83%). Conclusion: The limitation of studies with similar methodology is highlighted, and a more detailed investigation into the relationships between job stress, eating behavior and nutritional status in workers is suggested.