Examination of nutritional behaviors of normal and obese adult individuals according to BMI levels by eating attitude test

The aim of this study was to determine the susceptibility of eating disorders to the 18-65 year-old clients who applied to Merve Şafak Nutrition and Diet Counseling Centre in İzmir between December 2018 and May 2019. The study was conducted with 108 adult individuals, 40 of whom were male and 68 were female. A questionnaire including sociodemographic characteristics, health and physical activity information, eating habits, eating attitude test has been applied and anthropometric measurements have been taken. The data obtained via questionnaire has been evaluated with IBM SPSS Statistics Version 24.0. Independent sample two-way variance analysis, Spearman Correlation analysis have been applied. The difference between the groups has been considered significant in the cases that the P value is less than 0.05. The body mass index (BMI) of the participants has been calculated as 31.67 ± 6,65 kg / m² in males and 28.96 ± 8,99 kg / m² in females. Eating attitude test is used to measure susceptibility to eating disorder consisting of 40 Likert type questions and people who score ≥30 are considered susceptible to eating behavior disorder. It has been determined that 92 participants have had an eating attitude score of less than 30 and 16 participants above 30. The mean eating attitude score is 21, 40 ± 9, 78 in females and 14, 70 ± 7, 73 in males. It has been observed that there is an opposite and very weak significant relationship between eating attitude scores and body weight and height of the participants (p˂0, 05). It has been found that there are significant differences between eating attitude scores according to thinking of eating healthy and the frequency of eating out (p˃0, 05). In addition, it has been observed that the differences between eating attitude scores of normal weight and obese males and females of different age groups are not statistically significant. Keywords: BMI, Obesity, Eating Attitudes Test, Nutritional Behaviour