Dietary fat reduction behaviors in college students: relationship to dieting status, gender and key psychosocial variables

The primary objectives were to assess dietary fat reduction/avoidance behaviors within a sample of college students, and to assess the strength of the relationship between self reported fat avoidance and a number of variables including body mass index (BMI), self-esteem, and responses to the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) and Eating Attitudes Test (EAT). A total of 210 female and 114 male undergraduate students were administered a food habits questionnaire (which assessed four dietary fat reduction behaviors), the EDI, the dieting subscale of the EAT, and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Measured heights and weights were used to compute BMI. Thirty-eight percent of the females and 13% of the males reported that they had dieted with the express purpose of losing weight in the past 12 months. The finding that females in general and female dieters in particular, scored higher on the EAT dieting subscale, and relied on three of the four dietary fat reduction behaviors to a greater extent than did males, supports the assertion that women rely heavily on dietary fat avoidance as a method to reduce caloric intakes. In females, the finding that a greater degree of fat avoidance was associated with significantly lower levels of self-esteem and higher scores on the EAT and on six of the eight EDI subscales suggested that fat avoidance may be a predictor of eating pathology and/or psychosocial problems in college-aged women. (C) 2001 Academic Press.