Environmental Causes of Eating Disorders
What causes eating disorders? There is no one cause of eating disorders, the development of eating disorders is complex, with biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Though some factors cannot be prevented, such as a genetic predisposition to the development of an eating disorder, environmental factors and causes should be well understood in order to try to avoid eating disorder development.
Defining eating disorders.
Eating disorders are both mental and physical illnesses. About 30 million Americans have had an eating disorder at one point in their lives. These illnesses are caused by biological, psychological, and environmental—sociological and cultural—factors. Disorders that fall under this umbrella term include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, eating disorder not otherwise specified, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, pica, rumination disorder, unspecified feeding or eating disorder, laxative abuse, and compulsive exercise.
What are environmental factors?
Environmental factors are anything that affects your traits other than your DNA. It is not environmental factors on their own that cause eating disorders, rather the environment coupled with genetic factors or the environment can influence psychological factors which increase risk and are symptoms of eating disorders.
Social factors that contribute to eating disorder development can either refer to the media or the more immediate friends and family. These include external pressure to have and maintain a certain body that fits beauty standards, social media, marketing, negative body talk, and the normalization of diet culture.
Psychological factors that contribute to eating disorder development are thoughts and feelings that affect external behavior. Psychological behaviors that can contribute to eating disorder development include low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, unhealthy coping mechanisms, inability to express emotions and feelings, a history of abuse, history of trauma, obsessive thinking, perfectionism, and being sensitive to reward and punishment. Many of these thoughts and feelings can be influenced by external factors, meaning that psychological factors can also be environmental in nature, specifically the aforementioned social factors.
Media, Social Media, and Diet Culture
Diet culture, the perpetuation of the belief that thinness should be valued above all else, is perpetuated and made worse by the involvement of the media. Bodies portrayed in the media contribute to the unrealistic and unattainable thin ideal. These bodies are either achieved through food restriction and overexercise or more commonly through photoshop. Social media has made this phenomenon more extreme, with everyone who owns a smartphone being able to photoshop all of their photos for social media. When unrealistic beauty standards are perpetuated, pressure to attain that body—no matter how impossible—increases. Diet culture, through social media, increases external pressures to diet and restricts food intake, which can lead to eating disorders.
Peer and Familial Pressures
The perpetuation of diet culture and the thin ideal through social media contributes to a society that values thinner bodies. This society breeds a culture where friends, family, and even strangers apply pressure to attain and maintain a certain body type. External pressure from peers and family members can increase the internal pressure to diet.
Dieting as a precursor for eating disorders.
These external—environmental—factors can play a role in the desire to lose weight through dieting and extreme exercise, a known precursor to disordered eating and eating disorders. Though dieting may not always lead to eating disorders, they are associated with following restrictive diets. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 35% of “normal” dieters will progress to pathological dieting and 20-25% of those who progress to pathological dieting develop eating disorders.
Environmental and external factors create internal pressure to diet. Social and cultural rules contribute to psychological causes of eating disorders as well as increase pressure to diet, which is a precursor for eating disorders. It is important to have the ability to recognize and call out environmental causes of eating disorders. Having the ability to do so and act upon it can help dismantle internal diet talk and maybe even help prevent an eating disorder from developing in yourself or those around you.
References
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Daryanani, A. (2021, January 28). Diet culture [Editorial]. UC San Diego Recreation. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://recreation.ucsd.edu/2021/01/diet-culture-social-media/
Ekern, J. (Ed.). (n.d.). Eating disorders, environmental or biological? Eating Disorder Hope. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/eating-disorders-environmental-biological
Information by eating disorder. (n.d.). National Eating Disorders Association. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/information-eating-disorder
Oakes, K. (2019, March 11). The complicated truth about social media and body image [Editorial]. BBC Future. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190311-how-social-media-affects-body-image
Understanding what causes and eating disorder to develop? (n.d.). The Eating Disorder Foundation. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://eatingdisorderfoundation.org/learn-more/about-eating-disorders/contributing-factors/
What are eating disorders? (n.d.). National Eating Disorder Association. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/what-are-eating-disorders
What are the causes of eating disorders? (n.d.). Eating Disorder Hope. https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/eating-disorder/causes
What is an environmental factor? (n.d.). Learn. Genetics. Genetic Science Learning Center. Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/genetics/environmental/