“Stay at home with bakery products” can be public motto of quarantine days in the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak: some evidence from web-based searches

Abstract

The aim of this retrospective infodemiological study is to determine the public interest in the bakery products during confinement days of coronavirus through Google Trends (GT). The category and regions selected in Google Trends were “food and drink”, Sweden, Turkey, and Italy, respectively. Sweden was included in to study as a control group because there is no quarantine implementation in the pandemic. The keywords of “flour”, “yeast”, “pastry”, “bread”, “biscuit”, “cake”, “cracker”, “pasta” and “pizza” were searched in Turkish, Italian, and Swedish language on GT. Search spectrums were “1 March 2011-31 May 2020” and “1 March-31 May 2020” to determine the monthly and daily search queries successively. According to last 10 years’ data, change of relative search volume (RSV) scores during March, April, May between 2020-2019 in the “flour” was (+22, +41,+40)/(+16,+52,+25)/(+55,+79,+28) and “yeast” was (+62,+71,+31)/(+27,+89,+24)/(+72,+90,+30) in Sweden, Turkey, and Italy, respectively. Search queries of "bread", "cake", "pasta" and "pizza" were too higher in Italy and Turkey within the search period, corresponding to previous year. There was significantly positive correlation between daily new cases of coronavirus and daily RSV values of “flour” (r=0.86, p<0.001), “yeast” (r=0.89, p<0.001) and bread” (r=0.91, p<0.001) in Italy and “yeast” in Turkey (r>0.83, p<0.001). GT has vital importance to following public interest and concerns especially in quarantine days of the pandemic. Quarantine enforcement can cause the over-interest in baked goods that generally have high carbohydrate and high fat. Excessive search volumes about baked goods can indicate to potential increasing of non-communicable diseases in the future. Therefore, the public should be informed about the adverse outcomes of unhealthy food choices in quarantine regions.