Comfort food concepts and contexts in which they are used: A scoping review protocol

by Juliana Miranda Pereira, Rute Guedes Melo, Joyanne de Souza Medeiros, Anna Cecília Queiroz de Medeiros, Fívia de Araújo Lopes, on behalf of Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte

The objectives of this study are to clarify the scientific definition of comfort food, identify which methodologies are being used in research on this topic and which factors are associated with the consumption of comfort food.

The consumption of comfort foods is subjective and influenced by individual experiences, as they are known and appreciated by the person. However, divergences about the definition of comfort food in the scientific literature reflect the heterogeneity of the methods used in the research, and consequently identification of possible factors associated with the consumption of this type of food, which can influence the knowledge about the consumption of these foods and their potential effects on the health of those who consume them.

Works with a qualitative and quantitative approach published in full in indexed sources or in gray literature, available online in the databases consulted, without restriction on language or year of publication will be included.

The protocol was built based on the methodological recommendations of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) for scoping reviews and the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). The Participants, Concept and Context (PCC) mnemonic strategy was built: general population, comfort food concept and world context. Based on this, search strategies were developed for different databases. Instruments were also developed for recording documents, extracting data, justifying the exclusion of documents and not obtaining access to content. A Pilot Study was conducted to test the developed methodology and instruments. The protocol has been registered with the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/gnza4/). The results will be presented in the review resulting from this protocol in three ways: accounting of the documents will be recorded in a PRISMA Flow Diagram, the main information of the studies and their frequencies will be presented in a table, and the union of these outcomes will be presented visually in a Graphical Abstract.