When clean eating isn’t as faultless: the dangerous obsession with healthy eating and the relationship between Orthorexia nervosa and eating disorders in Mexican University students

Abstract

Background: Orthorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder that has been scarcely studied in characteristics, causes and symptoms, as well as in consequences and the relationship with other eating disorders. The present study had as its main objective the analysis of said relationship and inquisition of the possibility of predicting the development of an eating disorder from the presence of orthorexia nervosa. Also, it analyzed the differences by sex in Mexican university students. Methods: The sample consisted of 911 university students (65.4% women and 34.6% men), between an age range of 18 to 28 years old (M = 21 and SD = 1.9). Two questionnaires were responded: the ORTO14MX, a version of the ORTO-15 instrument previously validated in Mexican students, and the EDE-Q in its short version. Besides, sociodemographic data of interest was obtained and used for this study. Results: The Pearson’s correlation analysis demonstrated statistically significant relations, from mild to moderate, between the factors that make up both scales, while the linear regression analysis demonstrated that 40% of the variance is explained with the factors from the ORTO-14MX scale in the overall sample for the study. Additionally, statistically significant differences were found between men and women regarding all the subscales conforming the instruments that measured orthorexia and eating disorders. Conclusion: These results show a moderate predictive degree, that as promising as it is, isn’t conclusive. Likewise, it was confirmed that women are still more vulnerable to develop orthorexia or another eating disorder. It can be concluded that there’s a vast necessity for more studies measuring the relationship between orthorexia nervosa and eating disorders, in Latinamerican samples with diverse characteristics in sociocultural backgrounds, and clinical samples.