Relationship between Physical Activity, Mediterranean Diet and Emotional Intelligence in Spanish Primary Education Students

Abstract

There is an international social concern about the low levels of physical activity among young people. It is essential to know what factors influence the practice of physical activity in order to design effective proposals for health promotion. The study aims to: (1) classify primary school students according to their levels of out-of-school physical activity, Mediterranean diet, emotional attention, emotional clarity and emotional repair; (2) analyse descriptively and correlationally the adolescents’ profiles of out-of-school physical activity, Mediterranean diet and emotional attention, clarity and repair. The study design was cross-sectional and descriptive–correlational. The sample consisted of 293 children aged 10–12 years in Granada (Spain). An ad hoc socio-academic questionnaire, the KIDMED test and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24) were used for data collection. Four clusters were identified by the Ward’s method and participants were classified using the K-means method. Subsequently, cluster classification was validated through the MANOVA test (F (861) = 106.12; p ≤ 0.001; f = 1.95). The strongest correlation was obtained in cluster 1 between emotional clarity and emotional repair (r = 0.56; p ≤ 0.01). In conclusion, the mean values of time spent in out-of-school physical activity, Mediterranean diet, emotional attention, emotional clarity and emotional repair of students are adequate and vary according to sex. There are significant differences among the physical activity levels of all clusters, as well as among the emotional variables of attention, clarity and repair. In addition, the correlations between the variables studied vary in each cluster.

Relationship between Mediterranean diet, physical activity and emotional intelligence in Spanish undergraduates

“…García-Pérez et al (2023) showed that 37.5% of law, social work and psychology students had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet and 39.7% had medium adherence. The dietary levels of Spanish university students are in line with those obtained for other population groups (Sanz-Martín et al, 2023a). Sanz-Martín et al (2023a) showed that 11.6% of primary school students had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet, 56.66% had medium adherence and 31.74% had high adherence.…”

“…The dietary levels of Spanish university students are in line with those obtained for other population groups (Sanz-Martín et al, 2023a). Sanz-Martín et al (2023a) showed that 11.6% of primary school students had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet, 56.66% had medium adherence and 31.74% had high adherence.…”

“…These skills include emotional intelligence (Melguizo-Ibáñez et al, 2023b). Nowadays, there is a social concern about lifestyle habits in the young population (Sanz-Martín et al, 2023a), especially with regard to university students (Flores et al, 2023;García-Castillo et al, 2024).…”

“…The Mediterranean diet is positively related to some determinants, such as physical activity (Carrillo-López et al, 2021;García-Pérez et al, 2023;Tárraga et al, 2021) and emotional intelligence (Melguizo et al, 2021;Melguizo-Ibáñez et al, 2023b;Sanz-Martín et al, 2023a). Just as diet can bring numerous health benefits (Martínez-González et al, 2019;Martínez-Peláez et al, 2020;Mentella et al, 2019;Morze et al, 2021;Papadaki et al, 2020;Tuttolomondo et al, 2019) and the joint practice of physical activity and development of emotional competence is also beneficial (Melguizo-Ibáñez et al, 2022).…”

“…The analysis of healthy habits according to homogeneous groups of participants makes it possible to identify priority and more contextualised lines of action (Robbins et al, 2021). This makes it possible to improve the management of available resources (Sanz-Martín et al, 2023a).…”