Intercultural Influences On Binge-Eating Disorders

The United States currently struggles to eradicate the self-inflicted epidemic of obesity. In this rich, sedentary society, food is diverse, plentiful, and accessible. Hunting, foraging, and farming are confined to bountifully stocked grocery store shelves, legions of restaurants, and most nefarious of all, home delivery menus. Television commercials, billboards, and the Internet bombard conditioned citizens with images of generous portions of succulent delights. Rarely is an advertisement seen for the humble carrot unless it is slathered in cheese sauce and sharing a plate with fried chicken and a mound of butter soaked mashed potatoes. For most, the word diet is a verb that must be grudgingly invoked after years of indulgent meals. Two thousand

America has been faced with the growing obesity epidemic. This is becoming very wide spread among all races and class levels due in part to the abundance of inexpensive food available and how easily people are becoming persuaded to but things they do not need. David Zinczenko published article “Don’t Blame the Eater”, Zinczenko argues that fast-food industries are not doing their job to provide clear enough nutritional information for hazardous food.

This article describes how unrealistic standards of attractiveness set by Western society are internalized by women from a variety of cultural backgrounds and translated into fat-phobia and body dissatisfaction and then discusses alternative cultural influences for food refusal such as issues of control, acculturation, and religious asceticism. The author claims that there is a need for culturally sensitive questionnaires and diagnostic criteria and suggests that the notion of anorexia as a culture bound syndrome is no longer valid as the illness as been identified in a number of non-western societies. A valid point is made

In the essay “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo speaks about eating disorders. In society today appearance is a huge factor. Even though appearance has always been a major thing but now day’s people take it to the extreme when trying to have a certain body image. Now day’s people think beauty is whatever is on the outside, instead of the inside and the outside. Most people go on crazy strict diets, surgery and some go through starvation in order to become a certain body size. Eating disorders are becoming more in effect now and not just in the United States , but happens to be going worldwide and not only with just the women, but now with men as well. Within the essay Bordo’s explains about how the body image, media, and culture influence the standard of the beauty leads to eating disorder. Another factor is family that causes someone to form an eating disorder. Those four factors are the main key roles that play apart on how eating disorders are being used.

Arbetter, Sandra R. "Eating disorders: emotional foods fights." Current Health 2, a Weekly Reader publication Mar. 1989: 4+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Perhaps one of the most evident flaws is the continual development and marketing of fad diets. These fad diets are generally characterized as being simple, short-term, and unrealistically promising. In other words, they do more harm than good. Deakin University’s Dr. Tim Crowe explains the issues behind these “Dieting Myths” in his article, Nutrition Messages Given By Fad Diets Can Alter people’s Food Perceptions (2008); In his words, “fad diets have been known to

The author is a mother and editor for the Wall Street Journal. The target readers of this article would be parents. This article goes to prove that parents are to fault for not teaching their children the connection between hunger and being full and they often blame the food industry for the junk food. The author gives several examples, including her own, on how parents influence how their children eat. She said that “we underestimate the dramatic impact our own behavior and the way we talk about food makes a difference”. She uses many studies to support her reason for why parents need to take responsibility and correct their approach when it comes to how kids are eating and what they are eating.

In her essay, “The Globalization of Eating Disorders,” Susan Bordo informs her audience of the growing trends in eating disorders. Through her argument, Bordo illustrates the cruel identity of body-image distortion syndrome while she searches for a solution to the eating-disorder problem by looking to its birthplace in culture. Making use of several examples and scenarios, facts and statistics, and appeals to pathos and logos to construct her argument, Bordo shows a strong intent on eradicating the growing crisis in a reasonably sound argument.

The relationship between ethnicity and eating disorder risk factors is a complex issue. There are many other variables that affect these two ideas, such as socioeconomic status, level of educational attainment, and acculturation. Flaws in studies such as unrepresentative and insubstantial sample size, and participation bias still have yet to be corrected for in order to obtain a more accurate understanding of the role ethnicity and its factors plays in eating disorders. Previous studies have suggested that the difference in eating disorder symptoms across ethnicities were negligible; however, the risk factors, such as the

It has been found that eating disorders are most common in the western and industrialized culture where food is abundant. This is because these individuals attach a lot of importance to their physical appearance and are willing to do anything to get the dream figure. An eating disorder is not just watching what one eats and exercising on a daily basis but is rather an illness that causes serious disturbances in eating behaviour, such as great and harmful cutback of the consumption of food as well as feelings of serious anxiety about their body shape or mass. They would start to stop themselves to go out anywhere just so that they could work out and burn all of the calories of a meal or snack that they had scoffed earlier. Two of the most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The regular description of a patient with either disease would be a youthful white female, with an upper social standing in a predictably socially competitive environment.

Medical care and nutritional education of the children is obviously the parents’ responsibility, but so many parents are careless about basic nutrition and the need for exercise. In addition, how many parents just don’t have the gumption to “battle” with their preschoolers regarding what they eat? Some parents have the attitude that “at least they are eating SOMETHING”. We’ve all been there, at our wit’s end just trying to get a picky 2 year old toddler to eat some kind of fruit and then using the cookies, pudding cups, chips, or gummy snacks as a reward (or substitution). A parents control over meals and their attitudes toward dietary intake are factors that contribute to childhood obesity. “Hood et al. (2000) found in their study that disinhibited eating in the parents, when coupled with dietary restraint, may be associated with an increased risk for obesity in the child”.

Maria’s family-related experiences learned during her childhood contributed to a distorted cognition of eating. Maria’s family food-related experiences are associated with her mother’s restriction of eating as a way of punishment. Use of food as a punishment increases the intake of food when the children have access to it. As consequence of this type of punishment Maria learned maladaptive attitudes and behaviors such as eating secretly and keeping food in hidden places in order to manage her hunger. Researches propose that food restrictions increase desire and intake of the food. At the same time the individual will show difficulties to self-regulate the food

In the world, more than two thirds of adults, about 68.8%, are considered to be obese (NIH, 2012). The consumption of westernized diets is something that is consuming the world itself. Throughout recent history the consumption food has become more and more of a dangerous act. The westernized diet often contains too many calories, sugars, and fats that people are ingesting daily. How is the constant consumption of this diet effecting everyday life? What are the changes internally that are causing disease and discomfort? If the consumption of the westernized diet is proven to be harmful, will that change the way that people perceive food? If proven to negatively impact physiological functions this knowledge may help the westernized culture

Dietary advice has cultural and health constructs intertwined. There are progressive and damaging aspects of the social constructs within diet tips. The gains are that it provides awareness of foods, it’s constantly evolving and has lots of variety to fit societies desires. On the other hand, these constructs can be negative because trendy foods may not be based off health with guidelines like status, ease and taste. It’s vital to grasp both sides of social constructs when discussing dietary advice.

Are Eating Disorders are a worldwide problem? There are 3 types of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, the fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, Bulimia Nervosa, the act of binge eating then purging or vomiting, and Binge Eating Disorder, eating until uncomfortably full in one sitting. The most common ones are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Even though they have become more common in the 20th century, the first cases of eating disorders were in the Western world and dated from the 12th and 13th centuries. Most famously was the case of Saint Catherine of Siena, who denied herself food as part of a spiritual denial of self. Throughout history, anorexia was caused by ritual beliefs, from the time of Western Christianity, women who starved themselves were thought to be closer to God. Ritual starvation lasted for a couple of days, in order to prepare the individual to receive some sacred message from God. During modern times, eating disorders are very different than before, today it 's mostly the way people see themselves that drives them. They are still more common in women than they are in men, but it does not mean men do not develop them. Eating disorders are made up of physiological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits meaning they do not ingest food regularly, or if they do they purge it. Purging means to force yourself to throw up the food you have ingested. People throw up due to the fact that they don’t feel skinny enough, and