BODY IMAGE AND EATING BEHAVIOR IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Resumo

Introduction: There is a concern with the aesthetic perfection of the body, a true paradox of what is desirable and what is socially acceptable. This, in turn, determines patterns that significantly interfere in convictions and appeal to capitalist materiality, worshiped by the fashion industry provoking stimuli for consumption of cosmetics, plastic surgeries, careers of artists, mannequins and athletes, violating health conceptions, causing the concern of the various areas interested in the quality of life of the human being. Objective: to evaluate and correlate the body image and eating attitudes of a sample of university students from MAGSUL College, Ponta Porã, MS, Brazil. Methods: quantitative, exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional. 106 students participated in the study. Three instruments were applied, being a socio-demographic questionnaire; To evaluate body image dissatisfaction, the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) was used and the Eating Attitude Test (EAT-26) was used to identify the presence of eating disorders. Results: 15.2% of the students with a suggestive eating disorder score (above 21) and 84.8% with a score equal to or lower than 21 were presented, by the application of the EAT instrument26, therefore indicative of absence of eating disorder. Conclusion: both age, BMI and weekly physical activity frequency are similar in the groups identified by the EAT26 as without disturbance or with probable eating disorder. The averages for age in each group were 24.86 and 25.44 years; Mean BMI of 21.78 and 22.77; And a mean of 3.83 and 3.33 times / week of physical activity. Regarding BSQ, the results were 95% for the students, who were distributed in 74.7% without disorder, 11.6% with mild disorder, 8.4% with moderate disorder and 5.3% with severe disorder.