PREVALENCE OF ORTHOREXIA NERVOSA AND ITS RELATIONS WITH HEALTH LITERACY IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Eating disorders are more common among young people. Orthorexia nervosa is known as a nutritional obsession that has not yet been classified but has been considered as eating disorder. The purpose of this study is to determine the frequency of orthorexia among university students and to examine its relationship to health literacy. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 1014 university students. The students were randomly selected by stratified cluster sampling method and the questionnaire covering the demographic characteristics of the students with ORTO-15 scale and the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU) were applied under observation. SPSS 22 were used to analyze the data. The prevalence of ortorexia was 12.2% (12.6% for male, 12.0% for female). 80% of them were found to have inadequate health literacy. Those having a low level of health literacy also received a low score on the ORTO-15 scale. It was observed that orthorexia was more common among people who had regular sports and doctor-dietician as information source. The frequency of orthorexia was found to be 12% in this study. It was found that orthorexia was higher among the regular sportsmen and those who got information from doctors and dieticians. Moreover, it can be said that the increase in the level of health literacy is at a low level of protection from orthorexi