The Correlation of Meal Frequency and Nutrition with Mental Health Status in Women Aged 20-39 Years: The 5th Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2010-2012

Background: We analyzed the relationship between meal frequency and nutrition with mental health status, and provide basic data on health promotion for breakfast and dinner skippers compared to non-skippers. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 2,114 women aged 20-39 years who participated in the KNHANES in 2010-2012. We compared differences such as marital status, weight change, obesity, and underweightness, smoking, high-risk alcohol consumption, exercise, suicide ideation, stress perception, depression, blood pressure, lipid profile, 25-Hydroxyvitamin-D, and ferritin levels among meal-skipping groups by cross tabulation analysis and general linear model analysis. Results: The proportion of respondent undergoing weight loss efforts was over 50%, and of those roughly 75% were using a specific diet (e.g., fasting, skipping meals, single food diet). The breakfast and dinner skippers tended to be young, unmarried, and, had higher stress perception and suicide ideation than the non-skipping meal group. There were significantly higher incidents of obesity (body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m 2 , P = 0.004), weight loss efforts, smoking, high-risk alcohol consumption, suicide ideation, and irregular menstruation in dinner skippers. In addition, there were significantly higher levels of under-weightness (P = 0.004) and frequent eating out (over 5-6/week, P = 0.005) in breakfast skippers. Conclusion: There were more physical and mental problems in dinner skippers in regards to high-risk alcohol consumption, suicide ideation, stress perception, and irregular menstruation. In the future, long-term studies are needed to reveal the correlation of meal frequency and nutrition with mental health status in patients who skip meals.