Emotional intelligence and healthy eating habits during social isolation in students from a private university in Peru

Background: To determine the correlation between emotional intelligence and eating habits during social isolation in students of the Universidad Científica del Sur. Methods: Correlational study with a quantitative and cross-sectional approach in students of a Private University of Lima (Perú). The sample was obtained through stratified sampling. 110 students from the careers of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics, Psychology, Stomatology and Nutrition and Dietetics participated. The instruments used were a questionnaire on eating habits and the Trait Meta- Mood Scale 24 (TMMS-24) to study the variable emotional intelligence, in addition to a questionnaire of data and personal information, for the exclusion criteria. Results: 60% of the students presented a medium level of emotional intelligence, while 32,7% presented a high level of emotional intelligence and only 7,3% presented a low level of emotional intelligence. When evaluating eating habits, it was shown that 90% of university students have adequate eating habits, from this result it is deduced that students have maintained their healthy eating habits during the period of social isolation, however, when determining the connections, it is evident that there is no significant correlation between these two variables. Conclusions: It is shown that the variables emotional intelligence and healthy eating habits do not have a significant relationship between them. However, it was found that age is an important cofactor in determining emotional intelligence, since students with poor eating habits at an average age of 20 years are more likely to have average emotional intelligence than low emotional intelligence.