Do Fad Diets Cause Eating Disorders?
By Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP

Typically considered to be acceptable behaviors because they have become such common behaviors, fad dieting and food restriction in various forms have become the norm in our society today. Restricting certain food groups, skipping meals and even vegetarianism in certain situations has come to be known as "healthy eating." "I am not hungry, I already ate with my friends, I'm late now…I'll grab a bite after work" in some instances become excuses to cover-up pathological concerns with weight, appearance and/or body image. In some instances they may become signs of incipient eating disorders; dieting can be a primary trigger to the onset of a clinical eating disorder where an individual may have a genetic propensity to develop anorexia or bulimia. Dieting individuals who develop eating disorders, in describing triggers to their disease, confide that after starting an innocent diet, they just kept on eating 'healthier and healthier' till suddenly they found themselves tyrannized by pathological compulsions. The long-term effects of fad dieting in childhood may also result in permanent damage to the metabolism and disequilibrium in one's relationship with food, resulting in over-weight conditions in adult years.

I was recently contacted by a television producer and invited to appear as an expert in a segment discussing an experiment conducted by two English reporters who attempted to starve themselves for a period of six weeks in the interest of better understanding the anorexia phenomenon. One of them became so despondent and uncomfortable, she dropped out of the experiment. The other became increasingly excited about the process of becoming thinner and thinner, felt an emotional high from the ordeal, and ultimately began to exercise compulsively, purge her food in her increasing determination to lose more and more weight, become competitive with others about thinness, etc. Through this show, the producer sought to put across the simplistic message that fad diets are bad because they cause eating disorders.

My message to the listening audience would have been that fad diets by themselves are not triggers to clinical eating disorders…but they can and do become triggers to the onset of clinical disease in individuals who have a genetic and brain chemistry propensity to developing an eating disorder. Though clinical eating disorders are hardly epidemic in our society, afflicting only five percent of the population, their incidence is on the rise because disordered eating, fad dieting, and misconceptions about what healthy eating is have become rampant, triggering disease in ever-increasing numbers of susceptible individuals.

The producer, who was interested in communicating the more sensationalist notion that society, peer influence and the media are at the root of the growing problem, chose to do the segment minus an expert. Because of the dramatic nature of these diseases, the media here opted to rely on misinformation to better dramatize their point.