When The Dinner Table Is A Battle Field: Eating Disorders Examined

For some people eating is a constant battle. What causes people to have eating disorders? Women especially seem to be susceptible because they feel that they must be skinny like the models to be attractive. A popular reality TV show The Biggest Loser forces contestants to go through drastic life style changes to lose weight but also teaches how to eat healthy and how to set realistic goals. The success of shows like The Biggest Loser tells me something about America. Many Americans are over weight and scarily enough many who are not overweight believe themselves to be. Society pressures individuals to look a certain way or risk not meeting a mate or not being able to get a job. This causes pressures that we all know cause adolescents to develop eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating. Now new research shows that women of all ages suffer from eating disorders and it seems to occur during major life changes such as puberty, going to college, post pregnancy and even when children move away from home. As stated in the article titled “When Eating Disorders Strike in Midlife”.

The article blames our “thin-obsessed” culture because friends, family and even doctors fail to realize that a persons physique as dangerously unhealthy. These pressures not only are affecting teenagers but women of all ages. The article explains that middle age women affected with these eating disorders seek out help on their own whilst teenagers must be coerced into treatment. Even with treatment eating disorders are difficult to recover from it seems as if the bigger issue here is how as a society can we reduce the amount of people who start down the road of an eating disorder? Should it be seen as more of a focus in health classes? Or as a society that predicates so much on looks are we too far gone to realistically be able to stem the tsunami of people suffering from eating disorders caused by the very values of our culture its self?