Relationship of a desire of thinness and eating behavior among Japanese underweight female students.

OBJECTIVE: We conducted a questionnaire survey among Japanese female students to explore the influence of a desire for thinness and dietary behaviors on the development of eating disorders. METHODS: Self-reported measures of socio-demographic characteristics, body weight perception, height and weight, and dietary and exercise behavior were completed by 631 female university students at 6 universities in Kyoto, Japan. RESULTS: Many students had a desire for thinness (underweight students, 51.7 %; normal-weight students, 88.8 %), whereas ideal weight and body mass index were lower in the students with a desire for thinness than the students without a desire for thinness, and were also lower in the underweight students than the normal-weight students. The eating attitude test (EAT-26) scores of underweight students with a desire for thinness were higher than those of the normal-weight students with a desire for thinness. As a result of a logistic regression analysis, underweight, desire for thinness, and experience with weight control were positively associated with eating problems. Further, the association of eating problems increased along with the increase in the number of factors (underweight, desire for thinness, and experience with weight control). CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that underweight females have strong associations with eating problems.