The development of food addiction symptoms and the role of mental health and sex among Indonesian adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic

The current study examined changes in food addiction symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdowns among adolescents in Indonesia. Specifically, it examined whether mental health problems (i.e., depressive symptoms and loneliness) and sex moderated changes in food addiction symptoms from before to during COVID-19. At Wave 1, 411 adolescents filled out questionnaires. Adolescents' height and weight were measured. Of these adolescents, 258 adolescents (62.8 %) participated in Wave 2 and Wave 3. We used linear mixed-effects models to test the hypotheses. The results showed large significant decreases in food addiction symptoms during the first and second lockdowns compared to pre-pandemic that were not importantly explained by pre-pandemic mental health. However, there were concurrent associations between mental health indicators and food addiction symptoms. Moreover, a significant interaction between sex and pre-pandemic mental health was found, indicating that males with lower pre-pandemic depressive symptoms showed no changes in food addiction during COVID-19, while all other groups did. To conclude, it seems that patterns of addictive-like eating decreased among Indonesian adolescents during COVID-19. Future research should further examine the underlying (contextual) mechanisms being responsible for these beneficial changes in disordered eating.