Balanced Nutritional Knowledge Profile and Stress Factors for Karawang Health Science Students during Pandemic

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In 2020, humankind is faced with a pandemic problem. If preventive efforts have been made and the COVID-19 virus still infected humans, the last step that can be done against the virus is human immunity. Hence, efforts to increase immunity need to be done, especially during the pandemic. Immunity is related to optimum nutrition. However, optimal nutrition will not be achieved if the related factors are not achieved as well. Therefore, researchers were interested in conducting research to see the knowledge profile of balanced nutrition and stress level as one of the factors in achieving best nutrition during the pandemic. AIM: The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge profile of balanced nutrition and stress levels with a sample of health science students at Unsika (Singaperbangsa Karawang University) during the pandemic. METHODS: This analysis design was a combination of quantitative and qualitative exploration. It was determined purposively and conducted in November–December 2020. RESULTS: From the results of the inquiry, it is known that the profile picture of balanced nutrition knowledge during the pandemic of Unsika students;35% of respondents had less intelligence, 61% of the survey participants had moderate insight, and only 4% had a good one. Based on this experiment, it is also known that students got a lot of information from the internet (websites/ articles/popular social media). An overview of the stress level of Unsika students was 35% of respondents at normal stress level, 14% of the samples had mid stress stage, 27% considered as moderate stress phase, 20% included in severe stress class, and 4% got very heavy stress one. CONCLUSION: The causes of the stress during the pandemic included a slumping economic situation, due to task deadlines and lack of understanding of learning materials, loneliness, boredom, fear of infection of the virus, and other personal reasons.