The effect of healthy eating obsession on perceived workplace food service quality: A study on health workers in Ankara

This study is conducted to determine the factors that affect the satisfaction of healthcare personnel of a privately owned hospital regarding the meals. The study enrolled 382 healthcare professionals, who were randomly selected and agreed to participate in the survey, from September 2020 to October 2020.The survey is performed with face-to-face interviews on voluntary basis. Participants consist of 240 women and 142 men at age of 18 years to above 40 years. The survey addressed certain details such as demographics of healthcare professionals, history of employment in the institution, places they prefer to eat meals within office hours, reasons for preferring the institution's cafeteria, frequency of using the institution's cafeteria, the score given to communal nutrition system, quality of catering service and obsession to healthy diet. A 29-question survey is created to evaluate quality of food service in the workplace and the healthy diet obsession. According to the results of the scales, the service quality in the workplace is satisfactory above the average, %25.6 of the 382 healthcare personnel have orthorexic tendencies and %74.3 individuals follow normal dietary tendencies. Mean score of communal nutrition system is 60.27 in average over 100 points. It is revealed out that the male participants are more satisfied with the quality of food service in comparison to female participants, individuals with positive income status (income higher than expenditure) found the foods more appealing, individuals with post-graduate training found the foods more appealing than the individuals with other educational levels, single individuals are more satisfied with the food and the administration in comparison to married ones, general satisfaction level of security personnel and IT personnel is higher in comparison to other occupational groups and general satisfaction level of individuals who prefer institution's cafeteria due to free-of-charge meal are lower than those with other reasons to prefer the cafeteria. It is noted that male participants show more orthorexic tendencies in comparison to their female counterparts, individuals with more than 10 years of employment history in the institution have more orthorexic tendencies than others, individuals who prefer having meals at home have higher orthorexic tendencies than those who prefer to eat in other places, those who prefer institution's cafeteria due to free-of-charge meal have high orthorexic tendencies and there is significant positive linear connection between the score given to communal nutrition system and the score given to the service quality at work place. There are positive linear relations between the service quality at the workplace and healthy diet obsession and those correlations are weak. In conclusion; healthcare personnel are satisfied with the quality of food service in the workplace, orthorexic tendencies are at low level and there is no significant relation between orthorexic tendencies and the satisfaction with the food served at the work place.