Three Common Causes Of Eating Disorders In The Western Culture

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There are three common types of eating disorders and are each defined with a different food behavior; Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia nervosa and Binge eating disorder. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by a distorted body image and severe dietary, which limits the quantity of food intake to a very small amount, that leads to a significant low body weight accompanied by an intense fear of gaining weight. According to the Program for Eating Disorders of Toronto, approximately 0.5% of the Canadian population suffers from anorexia nervosa, which corresponds to approximately 150,000 individuals. Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of 15% of the individuals suffering from the illness (Chair, 2014, p.12.). The second type of eating disorder …show more content…
Numerous studies suggested different hypothesis about the causes of eating disorders, often being a consequence of fashion and the mass media pressure on the perfect body image nowadays having a huge impact. However, the causes of eating disorders are unintentional and unconscious behaviors that are not caused by the media mass or fashion but primarily caused by the morality basis in the western culture. First off, this is shown by the statistics of historical backgrounds, as eating disorders were appearing within the early middle Ages. At that time period, the mass media and fashion was not introduced into the society, thus the ‘’perfect body image’’ was not a stressful pattern to follow amongst women and yet, self-starvation was a virtually unknown phenomenon at that time period. Also, if the mass media and fashion was a primary cause of the illness, the percentage of women suffering from the illness would be much higher as a research done demonstrated that more than 60% of the women population within Canada aged between 16 and 25 are following fashion guides and are consciously affected by the mass media pressure of nowadays beauty standard (Chair, 2014, p.33). Therefore, if the mass media were primarily causing the illness, the eating disorders and the food behaviors would then be conscious, would not show a high death percentage and would not persist for a long time period. Fashion, however, has an impact on the way individuals perceive themselves but is not a cause of the ED’s (Giordano, 2005, p.23). Hence, part of the causes is based in morality according to the British Medical Association. Often times, individuals generalize and blame fashion to be the cause because of their use of thin models. Nevertheless, the use of this body type was occurred because it is what population wants to see, hence what it is unconsciously attracted to. This attraction to thinness is not a recent

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