Supervisors info:
Αρτεμισία Τσίτσικα, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Φλώρα Μπακοπούλου Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Ιατρική Σχολή, ΕΚΠΑ
Ελπίδα Βλαχοπαπαδοπούλου, Διευθύντρια ΕΣΥ, Ενδοκρινολογικό Τμήμα, Νοσοκομείο Παίδων «Π. & Α. Κυριακού»
Summary:
Adolescence is the period of a person’s life during which his physical and spiritual state is completed, but also he receives the stimuli for the smooth integration into the society, in order to serve individual and collective purposes. It is precisely the stage of ahuman life during which all the changes (mainly the hormonal ones) occur, leading the adolescent boy or girl to become mature man or woman respectively. Also, it is the period during which the physical and biological changes which are observed in the adolescent greatly affect his nutritional needs, while at the same time the changes which occur in his life-style affect and change to a large extend his eating habits and choices.
Purpose – Methods: Taking all the above facts into account, the purpose of this study is to investigate the eating habits and the possible eating deviations of the diet of Greek adolescents, boys and girls. In order to study those eating habits, the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) tool was used. The sample constituted of 1100 adolescents (average age 15,1 years), of whom 50,6% were girls and the vast majority (96,3%)was born in Greece.
Results: The main findings of the study were 1) 71,7% of the adolescents were happy with the image of their body, 52,4% wanted some change, 50,4% wanted to lose weight whereas 16,4% wanted to put on extra weight. 2) Adolescents who wanted to have changes in their bodies had significantly more problems with diet, bulimia, had fewer food control problems and more general eating problems. 3) The majority of the eating problems were experienced by adolescents who were not happy with their bodies, those who wanted to change their bodies and those who wanted to lose weight. The rate of bulimia was increasing along with the age of the participants.
Conclusion: Prevalence of development of Eating Disorders is significantly related to girls, adolescents with low body satisfaction, adolescents who desire to make a body change, adolescents who want to lose weight and adolescents whose father has low educational status. Ιt is necessary the adolescent’s family be constantly vigilant in order to detect and deal immediately with any possible occurring eating disorder.
Keywords:
Adolescence, Eating habits, Eating disorders, EAT-26 scale
