This study aimed to examine the association between early warm and safe memories and healthy eating among college students, and to delineate the statistical mediating pathways involving anxiety and subjective well-being. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 3,007 college students using the Early Warm and Safe Memories Scale, the seven-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale, the Subjective Well-Being Scale, and the Healthy Eating Scale. Bivariate correlation analyses revealed that early warm and safe memories were negatively associated with anxiety (r = -0.331) but positively associated with subjective well-being (r = 0.366) and healthy eating (r = 0.237).
Anxiety was negatively associated with both subjective well-being (r = -0.378) and healthy eating (r = -0.206), whereas subjective well-being was positively associated with healthy eating (r = 0.185). After adjustment for sex, age, parental educational attainment, grade level, and only-child status, the full model—incorporating early warm and safe memories, anxiety, subjective well-being, and the covariates—accounted for 8.6% of the variance in healthy eating. Of the three direct pathways terminating in healthy eating, comparison of the standardized coefficients indicated that the positive direct association of early warm and safe memories was the strongest (β = 0.166), followed by the negative association of anxiety (β = -0.124), whereas the positive association of subjective well-being was the weakest (β = 0.077).
The unstandardized total indirect effect was estimated at 0.026, corresponding to 29.55% of the total effect. Decomposition of this effect yielded an unstandardized indirect effect of 0.015 through anxiety alone (17.05%; 95% CI [0.010, 0.021]), 0.008 through subjective well-being alone (9.09%; 95% CI [0.004, 0.012]), and 0.003 through the complete serial pathway from early warm and safe memories via anxiety and subjective well-being to healthy eating (3.41%; 95% CI [0.001, 0.004]). Overall, early warm and safe memories displayed the relatively strongest standardized direct association with healthy eating.
Among the three indirect pathways, the pathway mediated solely by anxiety made the largest contribution, whereas the complete serial pathway contributed only marginally. Because the present study employed a cross-sectional design and relied on a relatively brief measure of healthy eating, the findings cannot establish temporal precedence or causal relationships among the variables, nor do they warrant direct inferences regarding the efficacy of interventions. This work was supported by the General Postgraduate Research Innovation Project of Jishou University (Grant No.
School of Sports Science, Jishou University, Jishou, China School of Physical Education, Chengdu Vocational University of the Arts, Chengdu, China School of Sports Science, Shanxi Datong University, Datong, China School of Psychology, Research Center for Exercise and Brain Science, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China Chengdu Experimental Middle School, Chengdu, China Correspondence to Xinxin Tan or Yang Liu. The authors declare no competing interests. The study was approved by the Biomedicine Ethics Committee of Datong University before the initiation of the project (Grant number: DTDX−20240086).
And informed consent was obtained from the participants before starting the program. We confirm that all the experiment is in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations such as the declaration of Helsinki. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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