Preventing Eating Disorders

[By Kiran Tamada] Apr 03, 2008 Many articles have been written about eating disorders in news and media. Eating disorders are fast becoming a common issue with the young nowadays. Many of our young are not shielded by the influence of the media. Eating disorders can cause death. Thus, it is important to find out ways on how to prevent eating disorders.

The media has a major impact on the development of eating disorders. It sets unrealistic expectations on what it considers a beautiful body image to be. With the constant bombardment of ads, the mental development of you or your child gets distorted. Some families do not realize this danger and use the television as a babysitter and as couch potato. This is not wise as children can be quite impressionable. Hence, you can do more to prevent eating disorders from an early age.

The media often prefers to use thin models. However, it is found that the body weight of an average female model used is about 25% less than her ideal weight. Many models strive to achieve a thin look in order to get modeling jobs. They would go for plastic surgery or become anorexic themselves. Even if they are not thin enough, photos of models hat appear on print media such as magazines are usually airbrushed to correct any perceived flaws. In this manner, a beauty standard is set that in reality may be quite unattainable.

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