Abstract
PurposeIt has been argued that orthorexia nervosa (ON) is a unique type of disordered eating of food considered by the individual to be healthy. Given that in other eating disorder populations attentional preference for food-related cues influences eating behaviours, is it also likely that these biases may be a characteristic of ON tendency.MethodsEighty healthy individuals completed the ORTO-15 questionnaire (ON tendency), a modified Stroop task containing words related to healthy and unhealthy foods and perceived hunger levels pre- and post-testing. The ORTO-15 was used to identify participants within this sample who demonstrated more or less of the characteristics of ON.ResultsResults suggest that the presence of attentional bias to healthy, but not for unhealthy food-related stimuli independently predict increased ON tendency. Increased attentional bias towards healthy food-related stimuli is associated with increased scores on the ORTO-15.ConclusionAttentional bias, as a deficit in information processing, towards healthy food-related stimuli accounts for variability in ON characteristics.Level of evidenceLevel I, experimental study.
Highlights
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is characterized by obsessive and selective eating behaviour which may lead to malnutrition and significant negative effects on social and occupational functioning [1]
Participants showed significantly greater interference from healthy food-related words relative to unhealthy food-related words. This suggests that the general pattern of responding, irrespective of ON tendencies, is for people to show a pattern of responding consistent with an attentional bias for healthy food-related words and that this bias is larger when compared with responses to unhealthy food-related words
Our findings showed that attentional preference for healthy food-related words is a significant independent predictor of ON tendencies over and above other variables
Summary
Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is characterized by obsessive and selective eating behaviour which may lead to malnutrition and significant negative effects on social and occupational functioning [1]. Orthorexia nervosa does not appear to be age-related [9] and the evidence base with respect to gender disparities is at present equivocal [7, 10, 11]. With a significant increase of ON-specific issues being reported by eating disorder professionals [13], calls have been made for the formal inclusion of ON into diagnostic manuals [14]. It has been suggested that anxious states similar to those reported by people with anorexia nervosa (AN) and OCD (strong beliefs about food and obsessive eating habits) may be characteristic of ON [19, 20] and lead to “health anxiety” [21]. In contrast to body image and weight-related concerns, which are prevalent in AN and bulimia nervosa [22], over exercising and weight loss do not seem to be the main objectives of those experiencing ON, unintentional weight loss might result from highly selective eating [23,24,25]
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