Body Image, Eating Problems and Dietary Intakes among Female College Students in Urban Area of Korea

Park, Hye Soon; Lee, Hyun Ok; Sung, Chung Ja

Abstract

Concern about body weight among young females is too much, so distorted body image and restrained eating are serious problems among Korean young females. A society preoccupied with thinness give a psychological burden to women, this burden may have adverse effects on health physically and psychologically. We tried this study to investigate body image, eating problems, and dietary intakes among female college students in urban areas of Korea. We satisfactorily surveyed using their body weight, desired weight dieting, binge eating, and night eating by self- with 500 female college students. We evaluated their dietary intakes by semi-quantitative food frequency to assess their usual intakes. After removing incomplete data, we analyzed 469 data by SAS 6.10. The 469 women aged 21.1 years. Their mean height, weight, and BMI were 161.4cm, 52.5kg, and 20.2kg/m2 respectively. Though the frequency of obesity was only 2.6%, the frequency of dissatisfaction with their body weight was 84.7%. Female college students desired their hight, weight, and BMI to be 165.8cm, 48.2kg, and 17.5kg/m2, respectively. The frequency of binge eating and night eating were 20.7% and 6.8%. The odds ratios for binge eating and night eating were 10.9(95% CI : 2.6-15.1) and 6.0(95% CI : 1.8-14.8) in the group satisfied with their body weight compared with the dissatisfied group. The odds ratios for binge eating and night eating were 2.6(95% CI : 1.6-4.4) and 2.4(95% CI : 1.1-5.4) in the dieting group compared with the non-dieting group. The mean caloric intake was 1,840kacl and percent intakes of carbohydrate, protein, and fat wee 57.2%, 16.3%, and 24.0%, respectively. The dieting group showed deficient intakes of protein and calcium significantly compared with the non-dieting group showed deficient intakes of protein and calcium significantly compared with the non-dieting group. Almost all women college students in urban area had dissatisfaction with their body shape, and desired severe undrerweight. The frequency of binge eating and night eating increased according to dissatisfaction with body weight, diet, and distortion of body image. Dieting has adverse effect on the intakes of essential nutrients. Educations is needed to correct distorted body image, and bad eating habits in young females, and marked preoccupation with thinness among women should then be reduced.