The eating habits, psychological features, and nutritional conditions of 1, 219 female university students were surveyed in July 2002 for early detection of eating disorders and early treatment. The relationships among these factors were also investigated. The results of the eating habit questionnaire enabled the students to be classified into four groups: one healthy group with no eating disorders (63%) and three groups with a tendency toward eating disorders (37% of the total), comprising those with anorexia nervosa (AN, 1.5%), those with bulimia nervosa (BN, 31.1%), and those with both anorexia and bulimia (AN+BN, 4.4%).
A nutritional assessment of 122 of the 1, 219 subjects indicated those tending toward a nutritional disorder accounted for 41.8%, including those with an eating disorder (ED, 2.5%) and undernourished persons (LN, 39.3%).
Those persons tending towards an eating disorder who responded to a questionnaire regarding psychological features indicated a positive correlation between somato-type negativism and good-child thinking, binge eating and a desire for maturation, a desire for thinness and self-negation, and a desire for thinness and perfectionism.
There was no significant difference in the self-expression item among the four groups (healthy, AN, BN and AN+BN); this seems to be a characteristic of female university students. The energy, fat and cholesterol intakes of the ED subjects were all lower, whereas the intakes of iron and dietary fiber were higher than those of the healthy subjects.