01/04/2008

'Fashion Industry Encouraging Extreme Dieting', Says Expert

The obsession with being thin could have serious implications for women who are extreme dieting and then binging, a psychiatry expert has said.

Janet Treasure, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London said that the fashion industry's apparent obsession with size zero could be encouraging the general public to follow extreme diets that could be having the opposite effect.

Professor Treasure said: "The promotion of the thin ideal might explain the exponential increase in eating disorders seen in women born in the last half of the 20th century and in part contributes to the increase in obesity."

The study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry said studies on animals, involving high sugar or high fat foods, led to binge eating and a susceptibility to addictive behaviours.

"If, after a period of food restriction, animals are intermittently exposed to highly palatable food they will significantly overeat.

"This pattern continues when their weight is restored. This tendency to overconsume or 'binge' when exposed to highly palatable foods remains for several months after the period of binge priming."

The report also said that models were put at serious risk because of the culture of thinness in the fashion industry.

Professor Treasure added that there was a link between autism and eating disorders.

(DS/JM)

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