Over the past two years the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected daily habits and lifestyle
of individuals. Within thismaster's thesis, we analyzed how the pandemic affected students and
employees from the University of Ljubljana (UL). We investigated how the pandemic changed
their dietary and shopping habits, their attitude towards the relationship between diet and dietary
supplements, and COVID-19 disease, and different aspects of distance learning and working
from home. The online questionnaire was active during the 2nd wave of the epidemic in
Slovenia, in the autumn of 2020, and we obtained the answers of 1328 students and employees
at UL. Most of them (80 % and more) reported good eating habits and no major changes during
the 1st and 2nd wave of the epidemic were observed. Larger differences were observed in their
shopping habits, with a decrease in the frequency of buying in classical food stores and more
frequent use of online food stores. A large proportion of respondents expressed the opinion that
diet and/or dietary supplements could affect the infection with SARS-CoV-2 (approximately 70
%) or the clinical course of COVID-19 disease (approximately 85 %). As a result, the share of
users and the number of different dietary supplements consumed have increased. Students and
educators expressed the opinion that online lectures could effectively replace classical lectures.
According to their opinion a certain proportion of study activities could be performed online
even in the future. The findings of our study will help identify the consequences of the COVID19 pandemic, particularly in the context of dietary and shopping habits, as well as optimization
of post-pandemic study and work process in the higher education sector.
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