Abstract:

Orthorexia Nervosa (ON), described by Steve Bratman in 1997, has entered the literature as a "healthy eating obsession". This descriptive study was conducted to evaluate the Orthorexia Nervosa tendencies of nursing students in a health school and to determine their eating attitudes. The research sample comprised of 270 students who study at a Health High School between the 2015-2016 academic year and volunteered to participate in the study. The data were collected using an ORTO-11 Scale. Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) and Eating Attitude Test (EAT-40). In the study, 73.3% of the students participating are female, the average age is 20.56 ± 1.96. It was determined that the healthy food perception of the students was vegetable and fruit with 56.3%, the unhealthy food perception was fast food with 64.4%, and 61.9% learned the nutritional information from the internet. The average point of the students in the ORTO-11 scale was determined as 28.57 ± 4.07, the mean score of EAT-40 was 16.61 ± 8.68 and their MOCI mean score was 15.9 ± 6.6. There is a significant relationship between the students' ORTO-11 scores and EAT-40 scores (r = .345, p = 0.000) and MOCI scores (r = .245, p = 0.000). Conducting more comprehensive studies on the subject will make significant contributions to the determination of the diagnostic criteria of Orthorexia Nervosa and the establishment of treatment protocols.

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