The investigation of the relationship between eating attitude behaviors and body image in orthorexia nervosa in university students in different faculties

Nutrition has a very important place in every stage from fetal to geriatric period. The changes experienced by the individual at certain periods of life may also have an impact on nutrition. This impact sometimes manifests itself as eating disorder. The purpose of this study is to analyze the correlation between the prevalence of orthorexia nervosa and eating attitude, behaviors and body image in university students. The study is a descriptive and cross-sectional study conducted on 250 volunteers (F: 165, M: 85) studying at 3rd grade of any faculty in Gaziantep Hasan Kalyoncu University. Certain demographic features and anthropometric measurement values of the participants were examined and 'Eating Attitude Test', 'ORTO-15 Questionnaire' and 'The Multidimensional Body/Self Relations Questionnaire' were applied. Mean age of the participants of the study was 21,8±1,7 (F: 21,7±1,8, M: 22,1±1,5) years. Participants were from faculties of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation (18,8%), Nursing (18,8%), Educational Sciences (18,4%), Nutrition and Dietetics (17,6%), Faculty of Law (16,4%) and Visual Communication and Design (10,0%). The mean height, body weight and BMI values of women were 165,9±5,6 cm, 60,7±10,7 kg and 22,0±3,4 kg/m2 respectively, while men's values were 178,2±7,4 cm, 78,2±11,5 kg and 24,6±3,0 kg/m2. All these values were lower in females than males (p<0,05). Scores obtained by female and male participants from EAT-40 test were as follows; 21,8±13,7 and 20,6±14,7, respectively (p>0,05).> Individuals aged 25 years and over scored higher than the other age groups (p=0,000, p<0,05). The ratio of married individuals who scored less than 30 from EAT-40 test was lower than that of married individuals who scored 30 and above (p=0,001, p<0,05). Scores obtained by female and male participants from ORTO-15 questionnaire were 37,8±3,9 and 36,8±3,2, respectively (p>0,05). Single participants monad scored 2,5±0,3 whereas married participants monad scored 2,2±0,4 in the multidimensional body questionnaire (p=0,004, p<0,05). There was no significant difference between the mean scores obtained from BMI classification and EAT-40, ORTO-15 and Multidimensional Body/Self Relations questionnaires (p>0,05). According to these data, participants' eating disorder and body image were correlated with their certain personal characteristics. Eating disorder is a rather serious problem. Thus, effective policies should be established, implemented and followed for the eating disorder problem.