Food Trends Are Making It Harder To Locate Eating Disorders
With a number of food-based trends and fads rising to popularity – many experts believe that new problem is fast approaching the medical world – distinguishing a fad follower from someone who genuinely has an eating disorder.
Many experts believe that restrictive diets and eating very particular foods while also following a very specific set of lifestyle options while not harmful on its own, is opening a gateway of confusion when it comes to diagnosing actual eating disorders. For most medical experts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate if their patient is simply eating improperly because they are following a diet they found online or because they have an actual problem.
However, this isn’t a problem that extends only to medical practitioners. Parents and family members of someone who suffers from a kind of eating disorders should be alarmed of this development as well, since at often times, they end up ignoring serious problems by simply dismissing them as fads and trends.
“Eating disorders thrive on rules and restriction, and they find vegan diets very attractive because they offer simple hard-line rules, cutting out anything derived from an animal source, and provide a ‘valid’ reason for the restriction,” Centre for Integrative Health dietitian Kate Lane told the Daily Telegraph.
The major problems come in when people take their personal beliefs and moral obligations beyond their health. This is something that has become increasingly common with full vegan type diets where dieters are simply not receiving their needed nutrition by not consuming meat. Despite one’s moral and ethical obligations – if they are not eating their require levels of nutrients and minerals, they are putting themselves at risk of a multitude of different ailments.
Experts believe that similar trends will continue to rise – as people continue to follow fad diets and expect to receive great results even though they are taking dangerous steps towards their future. The best advice that they’ve given to people who are confronted with this situation is to first of all, be alert. If anyone in one’s surroundings is partaking in a fad diet, or anything that doesn’t have a proper nutritional foundation, then they should be told about the underlying problems in their actions.
In fact, one should make sure that before they follow any diet, they check all of its intricacies to ensure that it manages to fulfill their requirements based on their daily energy needs. If it proves to be insufficient, then it is best to amend it or simply try something out. Food disorders can lead to a lifetime of difficulty and weight issues – and this is why they should never be taken lightly.
However, most health experts believe that with enough light being shed on this topic, people will begin taking it as seriously it should be taken – and if anyone near them has fallen victim to any kind of food disorder, they will act accordingly and give them the assistance they desperately require.
