Objective.

To identify harmful eating habits and academic performance in university students in times of Covid-19 in Ecuador-Azogues.

Methodology

. Descriptive cross-sectional study, study population 623 university students of the Medicine career, a survey was applied to them, the statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS V20.

Results

. 64.7% were female, 58.3% were from the province of Cañar, 82.7% were Catholic and 10.1% were underachievers, of which 28.6% were overweight and the probability of these students being underachievers was 63%. It was also shown that 82.5% of students consume junk food, with 3 times (PR 3.12; 95%CI 1.88-5.26) more probability that these students have low performance, the male sex also presented 1.6 times (95%CI 1.04-2.65) more probability of having low performance compared to the female sex, while students coming from the different provinces have 1.6 times (PR 1.63; 95%CI 1.03-2.63) more probability of having poor performance. A 85.7% of students consume alcohol and at least 25.4% have consumed drugs existing 2 times (PR 2; 95%CI 1.19-3.44) more likely that these students have lower performance.

Conclusions

. It was determined that low academic performance is related not only by gender but also by origin, malnutrition, consumption of junk food and drug use, increasing the proportion of students with low performance.