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Orthorexic eating behavior in vegans is linked to health, not to animal welfare

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

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to analyze the association between the importance of several reasons to follow a vegan diet and the degree of orthorexic eating behavior in a sample of vegan individuals (N = 65, 53.8% women, age: M = 28.22 (SD = 9.13) years, BMI: M = 22.91 (SD = 3.44) kg/m2).

Results

The results reveal that orthorexic eating behavior is associated with the importance of the underlying motives health, esthetics and healing, whereas animal welfare, politics and ecology are not linked to orthorexia.

Conclusion

Hence, this study reveals that a vegan lifestyle is not per se associated with orthorexic eating behavior, but rather that it varies with the underlying motivation for following a vegan diet.

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Notes

  1. Please note that by using the term “orthorexic eating behavior” we do not want to imply that orthorexia is a disordered eating behavior. We use this term to describe the continuum of the fixation on eating healthfully.

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank Timo Falkenberg for his valuable assistance with language revision.

Funding

The study has not been funded.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Experimental Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychology, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Friederike Barthels, Saskia Poerschke, Romina Müller & Reinhard Pietrowsky

Authors
  1. Friederike Barthels
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  2. Saskia Poerschke
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  3. Romina Müller
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  4. Reinhard Pietrowsky
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Friederike Barthels.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. In Germany, in the case of studies only involving questionnaires on general topics, a formal approval from a research ethics committee is not required.

Informed consent

All individual participants included in the study were informed about protection of their data and voluntariness of the participation and gave their consent.

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This article is part of Topical collection on Orthorexia Nervosa.

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Barthels, F., Poerschke, S., Müller, R. et al. Orthorexic eating behavior in vegans is linked to health, not to animal welfare. Eat Weight Disord 25, 817–820 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00679-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-019-00679-8

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