Merve Şeyda KARAÇİL ERMUMCU and Nilüfer ACAR TEK* Department of Nutrition and Dietetic, Turkey *Corresponding author: Nilüfer ACAR TEK, Faculty of Health Science, Department of Nutrition and Dietetic, Ankara, Turkey Submission: April 13, 2018; Published: May 16, 2018 Healthy Eating Concern (Orthorexia Nervosa) and Related Factors in Women Introduction As the importance of nutrition is emphasized in the prevention and treatment of diseases and improvement of health, awareness of healthy nutrition is increasing in society. In orthorexia nervosa, individuals adopt a nutritional style for purposes such as protecting and improvement of health, treating disease or losing weight. However, this nutrition style affects the life of individuals and also it may trigger nutritional deficiencies that threaten health and even causing eating behaviour disorders [1-3]. Orthorexic individuals usually prefer healthy and pure nutrients and they care the quality of food rather than amount [4,5]. In addition, they also show anxious behaviors about food preparation and cooking techniques and sterilization of cooker. They don’t consume food that is unfamiliar and unreliable [2]. Due to their obsession they often consume pure and additive-free foods, they tend to consume fruit and raw foods [6]. Orthorexic individuals who are struggling with healthy nutrition are often faced with severe weight loss and malnutrition as in other eating disorders [1,4-6]. But these individuals lose weight because of triying consume healthy foods and make their diet perfect mentally and not to look better like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa [7]. However, negative feelings such as regret and wanting to be extremely weak are not observed [3]. Along with the increasing interest in orthorexia nervosa, the number of studies for determining the prevalence orthorexia nervosahas also been steadily increasing. The prevalence of orthorexic tendency varies between 41% and 60% in studies conducted in Europe [1,4,8,9]. Studies conducted in the United States indicated that the prevalence of orthorexia varies between 69% and 82.8% [10,11]. These studies showed that orthorexia tendencies are common. This study was planned and conducted to determine the tendency of orthorexia nervosa in women. Material and Methods This study was conducted with 132 volunteer women aged between 20-54 years in Ankara. Health related anxiety, appearance focused problems, being more relevant in nutrition knowledge than men may be major factors for the selection of women as a working group. The demographic characteristics of the individuals were recorded in the questionnaire by face-to-face method Research Article COJ Nursing & Healthcare C CRIMSON PUBLISHERS Wings to the Research 209 Copyright © All rights are reserved by Nilüfer ACAR TEK Volume 2 - Issue - 5 ISSN: 2577-2007 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