R.D. More people are familiar with eating disorders than with disordered eating. Eating disorders include anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder, all of which are serious, life-threatening diseases that are becoming more prevalent. Disordered eating, although not as widely recognized, can also be physically and emotionally harmful. Disordered eating may lead to an eating disorder.
Many people grow up in an environment where disordered eating seems to be normal.
This may result from a society which places a high value on thin bodies, media which portrays an acceptable body as extremely thin, schools and communities where overweight people are ridiculed and denied jobs, and well-intentioned health promotion efforts which provoke a fear of eating fat. Dieting can be a form of disordered eating. Dieting is restricting the body from calories and nutrients that it needs for optimal functioning. Many children are starting to diet at a very young age. Sometimes these diets are self-prescribed and sometimes they come from misguided parents or health care providers.