Food semantics on pro-anorexia websites in Italy.

INTRODUCTION

The term pro-ana (pro-anorexia) means the spread of restrictive eating behaviors and anorectic advices in virtual spaces written by teenagers. The purpose of this pilot study consists in a qualitative and quantitative analysis of foods contained in a linguistic corpus made up of users' comments on pro-ana websites.

METHOD: The corpus of pro-ana websites was analyzed through the T2K tool based on word-frequency processing.

RESULTS

The results show conversations regarding beverages, products of vegetable origin (fruit, vegetables) and low-calorie foods, with a tendency to limit the fear linked to the choice of high-calorie foods through reassuring and reconcilable language labels ("light", "sugar free").

CONCLUSIONS

These findings specify the food semantics on pro-ana websites associated to an anorectic vocabulary with restrictive diets. The results could be used to characterize the most common food as risk factors within the eating disorders framework.