Teasing People About Weight May Help Cause Eating Disorders

(Health Day) —What can make a young person vulnerable to eating disorders? Tease them about the extra pounds they can carry, researchers say.

“Our results add to the growing evidence that weightAbuse is not helpful and is often harmful to the health of young people, ”said Laura Hooper, study leader, doctoral student at the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Previous studies have shown that young people who experience teasing or discrimination about their weight have higher rates of social isolation, depression, self-harm, and eating disorders. But these studies included mostly white and middle-to-high-income participants, so it’s not clear whether these findings apply to other groups.

To gain insight, Hooper’s team examined the association between weight stigma and eating disorders in an ethnically / racially and socio-economically diverse sample of over 1,500 young people in the United States followed in as part of a long-term study.

Investigators found a strong association between weight teasing and eating disorders in adolescents and adolescents. young adults, and that weight gain during adolescence was associated with the onset of dieting and with higher rates of dieting and overeating eight years later.

Weight teasing and eating disorders were more common among young people of color and those from poorer families, and the link between weight teasing and eating disorders was similar across all ethnic groups / racial and socio-economic. But the study didn’t prove that weight teasing actually causes eating disorders.

The results were published online recently in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

“This study provides evidence against persistent assumptions that weight teasing and eating disorders primarily affect affluent white youth,” Hooper said in a college press release.

Future research and policy efforts should tackle weight-related stigma and prioritize the needs of young people of color and those from poorer families, she added.

Creation of strategies, such as legal protections and anti-bullying rules in schools – to protect young people from weight-related abuse should include the contribution of young people who were touched by weight stigmaHooper said.

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