Without Dash

Dieting was not very common until the 1800‘s, simply because most people had a regular struggle to get enough food for their families’ health. Being fat was a sign of prosperity and respect.

Today, being thin has become the fashion. Obesity is a well-known problem and danger. Rising cholesterol, blood pressure, cancers, heart disease and more are much discussed topics. Being fat is no longer a sign of prosperity, but a sign of laziness. Fat people are often ridiculed and discriminated. And people massively join in the latest diets to lose a few pounds or more. Some until an unreasonable extent. Eating disorders, which were unheard of until the 1960s, appear in disturbing numbers.

To give a few figures on dieting:
- 50% of girls between the ages of 13 and 15 believe they are overweight.
- 80% of 13 year old girls have attempted to lose weight.
- One in 200 American women suffers from anorexia.
- Two to three in 100 American women suffer from bulimia.

Most people with an eating disorder do not recognize this as a problem, but actually think that they are living a healthy life style by skipping all kinds of fats and proteins in food, and exercising obsessively.

And as the Internet is a great medium to make people aware of the growing problem, it is also used as a medium among people with an eating disorder to give each other moral support and exchange tips. The number of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites seems to quadruple per year, according to Optenet’s Trend Report. There are now probably more than a million pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites. And the number of groups in social media as MySpace and FaceBook is growing as well.

According to research by Wiley InterScience, “study participants exposed to the pro-anorexia website had greater negative affect, lower social self-esteem, and lower appearance self-efficacy postwebsite than those who viewed a comparison website. Additionally, they perceived themselves as heavier, reported a greater likelihood of exercising and thinking about their weight in the near future, and engaged in more image comparison.”
And also
“The finding that so few moderators qualified the website main effect suggests that pro-anorexia websites have a ‘‘broad’’ reach, and that their influence is felt not only by populations that would be expected to be vulnerable (i.e., those with eating disorders, those high on thin-ideal internalization).”

Eating disorders are hard to cure. And the consequences of eating disorders are far more destructive than people believe. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease. Only 30 – 40% of them ever fully recover from an eating disorder.

There is treatment for people with an eating disorder, but statistics show that about 80% who get treatment are send home before the recommended treatment is completed. A main reason for this is that treatment is expensive and health insurances might refuse to cover the costs.

The best cure to eating disorders is prevention. Parents can help preventing eating disorders by guiding their young daughters.
- Parents should be a healthy role model, and not judge their own and others’ appearances.
- Do not allow playful teasing on body shape and size, but emphasize on fit and healthy bodies.
- Don’t diet yourself either, but stick to healthy and nutritious eating.

Three of the most powerful risk factors for the development of an eating disorder are (1) a mother who diets, (2) a sister who diets, and (3) friends who diet.

Since the anorexia-related deaths of two super models in 2006, there is a lot of controversy around the media and fashion industry. France was the first country to ban pro-anorexia websites, but for every website shut down, there seem to pop up two more. Some fashion shows avoid ultra thin models, or even ban young models or models with a low body mass index, but others continue to use self-starving models.