It would seem that we can add one more thing to the list of things for which the “obesity epidemic” can be blamed: anorexia.
Yep.
Well, more accurately, we can blame anti-obesity hysteria for an increase in the incidence of early-onset eating disorders.
HUNDREDS of children under the age of 13 in the UK are being diagnosed with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.
The first survey of pre-teen eating disorders has revealed that doctors reported 175 cases of children with the conditions during the course of just more than a year.
Nearly half of those children were admitted to hospital, with many having to be fed through a nasal tube or treated with drugs to aid their recovery. In one case, a child with an eating disorder died due to kidney failure.
While the average age of sufferers was around 11, the youngest case identified in the survey was a boy only five years old.
The number of people suffering from an eating disorder has increased dramatically over the past two decades, with an estimated 1.1 million people in the UK now suffering from conditions such as anorexia or bulimia. While the causes are complex, experts have raised fears that the pressure to be thin in today’s image-driven culture could be affecting even young children.
…
The research [from the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU)] revealed the overall number of cases was “higher than expected”. Anorexia was the most commonly diagnosed condition, followed by bulimia, but three children were also found to have binge-eating disorders. Around 20% of the cases were in young boys, almost twice the rate found in older teenage males.
Nearly three-quarters of the children showed a fear of weight gain, while a similar number were preoccupied by their weight or shape. Nearly 40% excessively exercised as a means of controlling their size, while 16% self-induced vomiting.
Jesus, five years old. I suppose things really have changed since I was a fat kid. Yes, I was well aware I was fat (and few people let me forget it), but my TV options were limited (it was the pre-cable era, after all), and I didn’t see a PG movie until I was 9 (Star Wars, if you’re interested). I also didn’t know anyone who would have advocated starvation or bulimia as a way to lose weight — certainly not to a child. But I’m guessing kids now, who are bombarded with a lot more information from a lot more sources, absorb that kind of thing as background noise:
Andrew Hill, professor of medical psychology at Leeds University School of Medicine, who has a specialist interest in eating disorders, pointed out that conditions such as anorexia were still rare among young children. However, he warned that young children were becoming more aware of shape and weight issues due to the “image- dominated” nature of modern culture.
“You can’t turn a corner without seeing somebody’s image on a billboard. You walk into shops and you are surrounded by magazines and news papers which are all pictorially driven,” he said. “You don’t have to have the sophistication of language to understand the impact of pictures. That is why it affects kids so much.”
Hill also said extreme thinness was now “socially sanctioned” and constant anti-obesity messages were also confusing the issue for children. He argued that this was “undoubtedly” a factor in eating disorders among young people, although he said it was difficult to determine exactly how important it was.
“You see so many famous actresses and supermodels who at some point had an eating disorder – it’s if they can do it, then why not me?” he added.
“I think in a sense it is fairly disastrous that it has become socially acceptable.”
Are average-weight kids these days* obsessively monitored for signs of sliding into obesity or something? Because I just can’t think of a reason why kids that young would be so body-obsessed when they don’t stick out as fat (I sure as hell don’t remember the normal-weight kids getting the same messages I did to lose weight). Unless they’re responding to other stressors, or modeling their stress response on the people they eat with. If family members respond to stress by not eating, or by binging, purging or overexercising, the kids might tend to pick up that that’s the way to do it. A coworker of mine was telling me today about her cousin, who’s been hospitalized three times for eating disorders in the past 11 years; the first time, she was only 7. She spent a year and a half in the hospital. She was under stress due to her parents’ divorce. But even though that stressor ended, she had completely fucked-up eating habits and attitudes towards food and her body, and that’s only made it harder for her.
So how do you deal with this? How do you raise kids who don’t start developing body dysmorphia before they hit kindergarten? How do you counteract the cultural messages, both those that obsess about thinness and those that are hysterically monitoring kids for signs of later obesity? Any ideas?
* I used both “kids today” and “kids these days.” Dammit. And get offa my lawn.