The Prevalence of Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating in Nutrition Student and Dietitians

An eating disorder is a “persistent disturbed eating behaviors that result in altered consumption or absorption of food and physical or psychological dysfunction” while orthorexia nervosa is an “obsession with eating healthy food and avoiding unhealthy food”.1, 3 This literature review collected and examined 29 papers. Eighteen of the papers were considered to be pertinent to the subject. Of the eighteen, thirteen papers demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between nutrition students and dietitians and being at high risk for an eating disorder.5, 6, 8, Dietetic students were two times as likely to have an eating disorder than their non-dietetic counterparts, with eating disorders affecting 12.9% of dietitians.6, 16 Furthermore, 49.5% of dietitians had symptoms of orthorexia nervosa.6 Around 90% of nutrition students had body image dissatisfaction and 83% desired to lose weight.5 The causality of this occurrence cannot be determined, however, 32.7% of nutrition students chose the field due to personal experience.28 Due to mixed findings, it is not known if increased nutrition knowledge heightens the eating disorder or if increased knowledge helps to create a healthier relationship with food. 8, 13, 16, 21, 22, 23 Many interventions have been suggested including screening students for eating disorders prior to admission of the nutrition program, providing plenty of opportunities for students to self-reflect about their relationship with food, exposing students to campus counseling if needed, and encouraging the students to engage in eating disorder awareness week, and providing cognitive dissonance programs.6-10 Conversations need to start to destigmatize eating disorders and the mental health taboo. The first intervention suggested has some ethical issues associated with the execution.9, 29 Future research is critical to investigate the etiology of this occurrence and to develop an effective intervention is crucial.Master of Public Healt