HOME FOOD ENVIRONMENTS OF PATIENTS WITH EATING DISORDERS: A COMPARISON STUDY

Purpose: To look at the differences between the home food environments of adolescent patients who have eating disorders compared to overweight, obese, and normal weight adolescents using a validated Home Food Inventory (HFI). Our hypothesis was that patients who have eating disorders would have healthier home food environments with less high fat, sugary, and processed foods and more fresh produce than other adolescents, perhaps influencing adolescents to focus on eating in a perceived healthy way or in extreme circumstances contributing to the development of orthor-exia nervosa. Methods: The HFI was distributed to adolescent patients age 12-18 years old coming to an adolescent medicine office for initial eating disorder evaluations, first time weight management visits, acute visits, and physical examinations. Patients who had previously seen a nutritionist and families who were not English speaking/ reading were not included in the study. Demographic data was collected using a separate survey created by the study's investigators. The HFI was scored using the validated scoring protocol and analyzed along with the collected demographic data. Specifically, an obesogenic score was calculated based off of the same validated scoring protocol and was used to measure the presence of foods known to contribute to the development of obesity (sugary beverages, processed foods, candy, etc.), and their availability in the home. Results: There were 62 total participants. 28 participants in the eating disorder group (22 with typical anorexia nervosa and 6 with atypical anorexia nervosa), 18 in the overweight/obese group, and 16 in the control group. Due to missing data, a limited obesogenic score was created eliminating 2 out of 10 food groups and 8 out of 22 individual food items used in the validated scoring protocol. 24 participants who had additional missing data were not included in the analysis, leaving 38 remaining participants (17 in the eating disorder group, 9 in the control group, and 12 in the overweight/obese group). The new potential range for scoring using the limited obesogenic score was 1-57, versus a range of 1-71 using the validated scoring protocol. The median obesogenic score for the eating disorder group was 18.4/57 (32.3%), for the control group 23.8/57(41.2%), and for the overweight/obese group 17.8/57(31.2%). Conclusions: The median obesogenic scores of the eating disorder group and overweight/obese group were similar (32.3% vs 31.2%), and both we