ABSTRACT
Exam stress is an unpleasant emotional reaction to the process of assessment. It is considered as a serious and common educational problem. Exam stress causes eating disorders, including binge eating, which can lead to obesity and complications that usually accompany it. This study investigated the correlation between food intake and exam stress in 3rd-grade high school female students in Educational district 3 of Tehran, 2010. A cross-sectional study was conducted, in which 140 high school female students in the third grade of Educational District 3 of Tehran participated. Data was collected through interviews, one dietary recall and 3 food record questionnaires during a week. Exam stress was assessed by the Test Anxiety Inventory. Data on 10 students were excluded because of unriable/inappropriate responses. Therefore, data analysis was done on the data collected on 130 subjects, using the SPSS 16 program. There were no relationships between food intake and the 4 exam stress groups or stress scores. The food subgroups which were found to have a significant association with exam stress were bread [p=0.003], rice [p=0.035], processed meats [p=0.031], dairy products [p=0.029] and industrially produced fruit juices [p=0.049]. However, after adjustment for body mass index [BMI] and changes in food intake at stress time, the only food subgroup which had a significant positive relationship with stress scores was industrially produced fruit juices. The average intakes of energy, carbohydrate, and protein in the 4 stress groups differed significantly, but here again, after adjustment for BMI and changes in food intake at the time of stress, the differences disappeared. Consumption of industrially produced fruit juices increases with increases in exam anxiety. Since such juices have a high content of sugar, this observation can be said to confirm the hypothesis of existence of a positive association between anxiety and carbohydrate consumption