OBJECTIVES : Dietitians are at higher risk for orthorexia nervosa, because they have higher expectations of their appearance. The purpose of our study was to determine the association between orthorexia nervosa (ON), eating behaviours and BMI among dietitians.

METHODS : We conducted a quantitative, cross-sectional study among registered dietitians in Hungary by using non-random sampling (n=186). We used a self-edited questionnaire supplementing with EAT-26 and ORTO-11 questionnaire. Self-reported body height and weight were used to calculate BMI. The evaluation of the data was carried out with SPSSv22, including descriptive statistics, Student-t test, multiple linear logistic regression.

RESULTS : More than half (61.5%) of the participants had normal body weight, but 16.57% of them had ON tendency. There was no significant difference between the mean BMI (23.87±5.03 kg/m² vs 23.53±4.32 kg/m²; p=0.693) among the risk group and healthy participants. The mean EAT-26 score of the participants was 12.85±9.71 however 18.3% of the participants were at high risk for eating disorders. We found significant negative correlations (r= -0.483; p<0.001) between the total ORTO-11 scores and EAT-26 scores in the group with ON tendencies. Multiple linear logistic regression failed to detect any significant relationships between the total ON-score and the working experience (β = 0.043, 95%CI = -0.163 to 0.250, p = 0.68), or BMI (β = 0.096, 95%CI = 0.317 to 0.250, p =0.39).

CONCLUSIONS : Our results demonstrated that the participants had normal nutritional status, which is essential for effective nutrition counseling. The majority of the participants had no risk for eating disorder based on their eating attitudes and behaviors.Our results showed that the risk of orthorexia is present among dietitians and really important to pay attention to prevent this disease. Also our findings suggest that the systematic screening in practice can be a good prevention.