Are the Motives for Food Choices Different in Orthorexia Nervosa and Healthy Orthorexia?

Julia Depa,Juan Barrada,María Roncero

doi:10.3390/nu11030697

Julia Depa, Juan Barrada + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11030697

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Abstract

Recent research points to the bidimensional nature of orthorexia, with one dimension related to interest in healthy eating (healthy orthorexia) and another dimension related to a pathological preoccupation with eating healthily (orthorexia nervosa). Research was needed to provide further support for this differentiation. We examined the food-choice motives related to both aspects of orthorexia. Participants were 460 students from a Spanish university who completed the Teruel Orthorexia Scale and the Food Choice Questionnaire. By means of structural equation modeling, we analyzed the relationship between orthorexia, food-choice motives, gender, body mass index, and age. The motives predicting food choices in orthorexia nervosa and healthy orthorexia were quite different. In the case of orthorexia nervosa, the main motive was weight control, with sensorial appeal and affect regulation also showing significant associations. For healthy orthorexia, the main motive was health content, with sensorial appeal and price also showing significant associations. This supports the hypothesis that orthorexia nervosa is associated with maladaptive eating behavior motived more by weight control than by health concerns.

Highlights

More than twenty years ago, Steven Bratman, a practitioner of “alternative medicine” [1], coined the term “orthorexia nervosa” (OrNe) [2]: when the intention to eat healthily becomes an unhealthy obsession
The reasons for food choices associated with OrNe and healthy orthorexia (HeOr) and the psychometric properties of the Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) were examined
The six-factor solution (M2) presented the same problems: (a) poor fit (CFI = 0.932, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.900, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.066), and (b) no item retained in the last factor, with all cross-loadings over 0.31

Summary

Introduction

More than twenty years ago, Steven Bratman, a practitioner of “alternative medicine” [1], coined the term “orthorexia nervosa” (OrNe) [2]: when the intention to eat healthily becomes an unhealthy obsession. Affected people categorize food into “right and healthy” and “wrong and unhealthy”. This eating behavior, which can be considered disturbed, focuses on a perfect, pure, and healthy diet to positively influence one’s health [2]. People with a high level of OrNe value purity of food above all else, including the deleterious health effects of such a diet [3]. After this initial description, several case reports followed. The desire to be thin did not seem to be the main motive, but rather the desire to eat healthily [4,5,6,7,8]

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