Abstract
BackgroundOrthorexia nervosa (ON) is defined as pathological healthful eating. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is any difference in orthorexic behaviours between clinical and non-clinical groups, and in different cultural contexts. .MethodsRecruitment involved both female patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and healthy controls (HC) from Italy and Poland (N = 23 and N = 35 AN patients; and N = 39 and N = 39 HCs, in Italy and Poland, respectively). Assessment of orthorexic behaviours was performed with the ORTO-15 test.ResultsStatistically significant differences were found between Italian women in the AN and HC group, whereas no difference between Polish women in the AN and HC group was found. Both Italian groups scored significantly higher than the Polish ones on the ORTO-15.ConclusionsDifferences have been found between the Italian and Polish samples, both in the percentage of individuals with orthorexic behaviours as suggested by an ORTO 15 score below the cutoff, and in the mean ORTO 15 scores in the AN and HC groups, suggesting cross-cultural differences in orthorexic behaviours, whose meaning is currently difficult to understand.
Highlights
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is defined as pathological healthful eating
Mean age and BMI of anorexia nervosa (AN) and healthy controls (HC) from both countries are reported in Table 1, as well as the percentage of individuals scoring under the ORTO-15 cutoff
No difference was found with the Chi-square test in the percentage of subjects scoring under the ORTO-15 cutoff when comparing Italian AN and Italian HC (p = .263), or when comparing Polish AN and Polish HC (p = .670)
Summary
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is defined as pathological healthful eating. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is any difference in orthorexic behaviours between clinical and non-clinical groups, and in different cultural contexts. The aim of the present research was to assess the possible overlap between orthorexia, measured with the ORTO-15 test, and AN For this purpose, we assessed a sample of female patients under treatment for a diagnosis of AN, and a sample of female healthy controls (HCs) from the general population. The second aim was to assess the possible cross-cultural differences in orthorexic behaviours between Italian and Polish women, both with and without a diagnosis of AN. For this purpose, the same research procedure was carried on in two culturally different countries – Italy and Poland
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