Eating and acculturation attitudes of Turkish students in the United States and in Turke

According to recent research data, eating disorders are on the rise among non-Western women. Traditionally, non-Western women were thought to have less pressures for slimness and more favorable body image than Western women. The effects of acculturation among minorities living in Western cultures and westernization on developing countries seem to predispose non-Western women for eating disorders. During the last decade in Turkey, the adaptation of the American capitalistic model of economy seems to have led to the idealization of the Western obsession with body weight and shape in the country. This study was an attempt to compare the eating disturbances and acculturation attitudes of Turkish college students studying in the United States and in Turkey. The relationship between EAT-26 scores and four different acculturation attitudes (integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization) were investigated. A weak inverse relationship between eating attitude scores and separation scores was present, indicating that subjects who tend to reject American/Western ideals and tend to maintain their own culture presented with fewer eating disturbances. The results also yielded that Turkish college students in Turkey presented with more eating disturbances than did Turkish college students in the United States. Demographic differences of and the effect of westernization on the two samples were discussed to explain the results. Also successive acculturation was discussed to explain the higher rates of dieting and body image dissatisfaction among female subjects.