Binge Eating is the Diagnosis
Earlier this month Nicholas Bakalar of The New York Times reported on a new survey pointing to binge eating as an actual diagnosis. Here’s a little of the article:
The first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States, a nationwide survey of more than 2,900 men and women, was published by Harvard researchers in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. It found prevalence in the general population of 0.6 percent for anorexia, 1 percent for bulimia and 2.8 percent for binge-eating disorder…I was curious to get Dr. Fuhrman’s thoughts on this, so I asked him. You’ll see that he isn’t all that impressed:
… 'It confirms that anorexia nervosa and bulimia are uncommon but serious illnesses, especially among women,'' Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, director of the eating disorders research unit of the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University Medical Center said. ''It also finds that many more individuals, especially those with significant obesity, are troubled by binge eating, and underscores the need to better understand this problem.''
My thoughts are that the diagnosis of the disease (naming it) is not the cause of it and eating nutrition-less foods play a role in triggering overeating and other addictive behaviors. If the American diet relied more on natural, high fiber, plant foods, food addictions would dramatically be reduced.
