Introduction: The Mediterranean diet (MedD)is a characteristic eating pattern of the countries of the
Mediterranean region. Nonetheless, is unknown its adherence in medical students. We aimed to determine the
prevalence of adherence to the Mediterranean diet (AMedD) and associated factors in medical students from Peru.
Material and methods: Analytical cross-sectional study carried out by means of a virtual survey. PREDIMED scale
was used to evaluate AMedD. The factors assessed were age, sex, academic year, body mass index (BMI), place of
lunch consumption, cigarette smoking, and physical activity. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to
present it in crude and adjusted prevalence ratios (PRa).
Results: High AMedD was present in 38.50%. Statistically significant association was found for sex (PRa: 0.623;
95%CI 0.488-0.796); for overweight (PRa: 0.417; 95%CI 0.270-0.644), obesity (PRa: 0.591; 95%CI 0.400-0.874) versus
normopese; cigarette smoking (PRa: 0.450; 95%CI 0.263-0.773); and high physical activity (PRa: 1.652; 95%CI 1.233-
2.215).
Conclusions: AMedD was low. The related factors were sex, BMI, consumption of lunch outside the home, cigarette
smoking, anda high level of physical activity. Ifthis is confirmed in future studies, it would be necessary to consider
these elements to encourage greater consumption of MedD components by students, which would help to
improve their long-term health
