The Dietary Habits, Physical Activity and Mental Wellbeing of University Students’ During the Covid-19 Lockdown in England.

University students experience a unique combination of factors that can influence healthrelated behaviours and mental wellbeing, including greater autonomy, reduced budgets, and academic pressure. Therefore, students typically have sub-optimal diets and are of higher risk to adverse mental wellbeing. A scoping review identified considerable inter-study methodological heterogeneity in the assessment of dietary intake and mental wellbeing, and limited applications of a global mental wellbeing score in studies of students. However, most studies reported a positive association between better mental wellbeing and healthier dietary intake. Dietary intake, eating behaviours, physical activity and mental wellbeing are yet to be investigated simultaneously in a student population. Subsequently, an experimental study was designed to assess these behaviours and mental wellbeing using a global mental wellbeing score in students studying at a UK university and contextualise the findings to the Covid-19 pandemic (n = 59). Students reported poor diet quality, good mental wellbeing, and sufficient physical activity levels. Poor mental wellbeing was related to poor eating behaviours. This relationship was not moderated by the perceived changes to behaviours and mental wellbeing since the Covid-19 lockdown. Dietary intake and physical activity were not associated with mental wellbeing to a statistically significant level using the measures employed. This study was the first to assess these variables simultaneously in university students. This study should inform a larger, confirmatory future study to provide more powerful evidence of student health behaviours and mental wellbeing. Future works should outline if the relationship between poor eating behaviours and mental wellbeing is exclusive to students, or generalisable to all young adults. This thesis indicates a limited research base examining student health-related behaviours and mental wellbeing, and eating behaviours, but not dietary intake, are of more concern to the mental wellbeing of students.