Disordered eating impacts one in five youth worldwide
Identifying the magnitude of disordered eating and its distribution in at-risk populations is crucial for planning and executing actions aimed at preventing, detecting, and dealing with them.
FAB RESEARCH COMMENT:
'Eating disorders' come in all 'shapes and sizes' - as of course do those affected by them.More often than not, these conditions also go either unrecognised, or untreated - and not least because their prevalence - particularly in young people - has now reached truly shocking levels, with self-reported 'disordered eating' affecting one in five of all children and adolescents worldwide according to this new systematic review
Eating disorders, like all psychological or psychiatric disorders, are highly compex conditions, with no single 'cause'. Instead they always reflect a mix of genetic and environmental risk factors - including biological, psychological and social elements - which vary widely between individuals affected.
However, it is unlikely to be pure conicidence that the relentless rise in eating disorders over recent decades - and its expansion to developing as well as developed countries - largely mirrors the increasing proportion of 'ultra-processed foods' in the diets that most people now consume.
For details of the underlying research, see:
Watch FAB Research's recent webinar and Q&A session, and hear David Rex, RD, and Dr Alex Richardson discuss the latest research into what shapes children’s food preferences, and therefore their diets - and also offer some simple, practical guidance that parents or professionals can use to help improve children's (and their own) food choices.
The focus of this webinar is largely on selective and 'fussy' eating - fron normal, 'everyday' difficulties to the severe form of selective eating now known as Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID).
More than one in five youth worldwide report disordered eating, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published online Feb. 20 in JAMA Pediatrics.
José Francisco López-Gil, Ph.D., from Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Cuenca, Spain, and colleagues conducted a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to determine the proportion of disordered eating among children and adolescents worldwide. Study criteria included community samples of children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years and disordered eating as assessed by the the 5-item Sick, Control, One, Fat, Food (SCOFF) questionnaire from January 1999 to November 2022.
Based on 32 included studies (63,181 participants from 16 countries), the researchers found that the overall proportion of children and adolescents with disordered eating was 22.36 percent, with girls significantly more likely to report disordered eating (30.03 percent) than boys (16.98 percent). With increasing age and body mass index, disordered eating became more common.
"These high figures are concerning from a public health perspective and highlight the need to implement strategies for preventing eating disorders," the authors write.
"Identifying the magnitude of disordered eating and its distribution in at-risk populations is crucial for planning and executing actions aimed at preventing, detecting, and dealing with them."
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