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Prevalence of orthorexia nervosa is less than 1 %: data from a US sample

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Eating and Weight Disorders - Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Orthorexia nervosa, or pathological dieting based on being “healthy,” has been of growing interest. Clinical data are limited to less than a half-dozen case studies reporting instances of medical problems due to healthful eating. However, more than a dozen studies using a measure to identify orthorexia, the ORTO-15, report very high prevalence rates in non-clinical samples. Point prevalence rates are reported from 6 % to nearly 90 %. Such variability could be due to cultural issues or psychometric problems with the instrument. This study examines prevalence rate of orthorexia in a US sample.

Method

The ORTO-15 was administered to 275 US college students along with other questions regarding diet, exercise, and health.

Results

While the ORTO-15 indicated a prevalence rate of 71 %, only 20 % of the sample endorsed a dietary practice of removing a particular food type (e.g. meat) from their diet. Those who endorsed following a vegan diet had the highest (less pathological) mean ORTO-15 score. Further, when classifying participants based on their seriousness about healthy eating and whether their diet had led to impairment in everyday activities and medical problems, less than 1 % of the sample fell into such a category.

Conclusion

As in other countries, a large proportion of a non-clinical US sample scored in the orthorexia range on the ORTO-15. However, this instrument is likely unable to distinguish between healthy eating and pathologically healthful eating. Our estimate is that orthorexia nervosa like anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, is not a common condition.

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Notes

  1. Brytek-Matera et al. [15] refer to the ORTO-15 as the “ORTHO-15” and do not give an explanation as to why. It is possible that this is an issue with translation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge Peter Ray Concepcion for his assistance in data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychological Sciences, University of Northern Colorado, Campus Box 94, Greeley, CO, 80639-0094, USA

    Thomas M. Dunn, Josh Gibbs & Noelle Whitney

  2. Behavioral Health Service, Denver Health Medical Center, Denver, USA

    Thomas M. Dunn & Amy Starosta

Authors
  1. Thomas M. Dunn
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  2. Josh Gibbs
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  3. Noelle Whitney
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  4. Amy Starosta
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas M. Dunn.

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Conflict of interest

The authors disclose that we have no conflicts of interest with this research and are not receiving any consideration with this work.

Ethical approval

Prior to data collection, this study was approved by our university’s institutional review board for the ethical treatment of human participants in research. The project was given “exempt” status.

Informed consent

All participants read informed consent statements. As our study consisted solely of anonymous questionnaires, and a signed consent statement would be the sole way to identify participants, they provided consent by taking the anonymous questionnaire.

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Dunn, T.M., Gibbs, J., Whitney, N. et al. Prevalence of orthorexia nervosa is less than 1 %: data from a US sample. Eat Weight Disord 22, 185–192 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-016-0258-8

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