Introduction:

The confinement due to COVID-19 significantly affected people's food consumption, especially university students who had to adapt to virtual education.

Objective:

To determine the perception and food consumption frequency due to the COVID-19 pandemic among Peruvian students from a private university in Trujillo City, Peru.

Materials and method:

The research design was non-experimental, descriptive, and crosssectional. The non-probabilistic sample consisted of 169 students and the instrument used was a virtual survey (Cronbach's alpha = 0.846).

Results:

It is shown that there is a higher frequency of young people (n = 116) and adolescents (n = 45) who participated in the study, and that the average age was 22.15 ± 3.77 years. Likewise, the Frequency of Consumption dimension, it showed a higher frequency in the "Sometimes" scale, where it is related to whether it exceeded the number of meals per day (34.9%), eating out of control (38.5%), desires to eat unhealthy food (32.0%) and whether it influenced eating (30.8%). Similarly, it was shown that the majority of respondents consumed fruits (68.6%) and vegetables (58.0%) and considered water consumption essential (98.3%). On the other hand, there was a higher frequency regarding the consumption of ultra-processed foods (n = 95, 56.2%).

Conclusion:

The population of a private university made up mostly of young people and adolescents perceives that there was a change in their diet during the COVID-19 pandemic.