The Language of Food during the Pandemic: Hints about the Dietary Effects of Covid-19

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter data during the COVID-19 lockdown in the US, revealing a shift towards unhealthy food mentions, increased depression-related hashtags, and stronger associations between depression, unhealthy foods, tobacco, and alcohol.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into how pandemic lockdowns influenced food-related language and mental health indicators on social media.

Findings

Shift from healthy to unhealthy food mentions during lockdown

Increased association between depression hashtags and unhealthy foods

Stronger links between depression, tobacco, and alcohol during lockdown

Abstract

We study the language of food on Twitter during the pandemic lockdown in the United States, focusing on the two month period of March 15 to May 15, 2020. Specifically, we analyze over770,000 tweets published during the lockdown and the equivalent period in the five previous years and highlight several worrying trends. First, we observe that during the lockdown there was a notable shift from mentions of healthy foods to unhealthy foods. Second, we show an increased pointwise mutual information of depression hashtags with food-related tweets posted during the lockdown and an increased association between depression hashtags and unhealthy foods, tobacco, and alcohol during the lockdown.