The relationship between stress and eating habits among students / Nur Anis Syazwani Aziz Jafar and Yasmin Hairul Azhar

Majority of people nowadays live in a society of stressful environment. They usually eat to deal with the stress. University gives students a stressful experience. They face many stressors belonging to university such as friends, family and work. Most of the university students have poor eating habits when exposed to stress. Bad eating habits are a critical issue of public health that has huge implications on health and economy. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between stress and eating habits in university students. Our study comprises of eighty-nine respondents from UiTM Terengganu Kampus Dungun assessed using online questionnaire adopted from previous published studies which consist of demographic data, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Compulsive Eating Scale (CES). With regards to PSS, majority of the respondents answered with a mean score of 2.55 (SD=0.853) to the question of how often have they been able to manage irritations in life. Respondents also mostly answered with a mean score of 2.49 (SD=0.756) to the question of how often have they feel nervous and stressed. For CES, the highest mean total score 2.40 (SD=1.42) is eat too much because of boredom. The findings of this study indicated that overall, the respondents experienced moderate levels of stress. It was also found that a significant weak positive relationship is found between eating habits and stress.