Health

Health The Relationship Between Eating Attitudes, Competitiveness, Media Perception, and Self-Esteem Introduction Several factors may play a role in eating attitudes. In the athletic environment, being competitive, and the level of competition may require an individual to develop and maintain a specific body image. Being academically competitive may require long study hours, which may lead to missing meals throughout the day. Of the many studies on eating disorders, few focused on exposure to media messages such s television, movie, and radio ads, however these topics may play a factor in eating attitudes because many people are exposed to what the media portrays as beautiful, or attractive. Previous research on self-esteem show a relationship between low self-esteem and negative eating attitudes. A person who has low self-esteem may have negative feelings toward their body image, therefore develop negative eating patterns. Several studies (Blessing, Stanton, Warren, 1990; Picard, 1999, Virnig, McLeod, 1996, Ziegler, Hensley, Roepke, 1998, Parks, Read, 1997) have shown a relationship between eating attitudes and competitiveness. The studies, all conducted on athletes, consistently found a relationship between high levels of competition and high eating, attitudes, media, competitiveness, self-esteem, scores, negative, studies, research, questionnaire, relationship, high, university, part, often, body, between, athletic, students, scale, related, low, information, eat, being, questions, previous, person, using, throughout, thin, several, scored, require