Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted in order to evaluate healthy eating obsession-orthorexia nervosa and related factors in women.

Method: The study was carried out 132 volunteer women aged between 20-54 years. Demographic characteristics, health information were taken and orthorexia nervosa-15 (ORTO-15) was applied by researcher with face to face method. Antropometric measurements were taken according to the rules. It was determinated that ORTO-15 score ≤40 is orthorexic and >40 is normal. Data was evaluated using chi-square, analysis of t-test and correlation analysis methods with SPSS16.0 program.

Result: It was found that 75.8% of women has less than 40 points from ORTO-15 test. There is a negative correlation between ORTO-15 score with age (r =-0.183), body weight (r=-0.206) and BMI (r=-0.199) (p<0.05). It was seen that obsessional concerns such as choosing healthy food and this dietary pattern to be associated with physical appearance are common in orthorexic individuals.

Conclusion: It was found that orthorexia tendency of women has higher. It has been observed that orthorexic tendencies are increased in individuals with high body weight and BMI values. Determination of obsessional concerns of orthorexic individuals will be useful in the classification of the disease and development of diagnostic criteria.

Keywords: Orthorexia nervosa; Nutrition; Women

Abbreviations: ORTO-15: Orthorexia Nervosa-15; BMI: Body Mass Index