• Research reveals that 40-60% of girls in high school perceive themselves to be overweight and are actively trying to lose weight.
• Approximately 10-15% of these girls can be considered “chronic dieters,” two-thirds of whom are not overweight.
• Ninety percent of eating disorder sufferers are female.
• Girls are particularly vulnerable to the development of body dissatisfaction, unhealthy dieting behaviors and eating disorders.
• An estimated 11 million American women and girls have active, destructive eating disorders
• Eating disorders affect girls of all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
• Eating disorders are serious health conditions with and anorexia has one of the highest death rates of any mental illness
• Over one-half of teenage girls use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives
• Girls who diet frequently are 12 times as likely to binge as girls who don’t diet
• 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner.
• 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.
• The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds.
• Most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women.
• 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets, and 82% of their families are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets.
• 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% progress to partial or full-syndrome eating disorders.

Number of  Men and Boys Struggling With Unhealthy Eating Behaviors

• “Males are taking on our unhealthy obsession with thinness and perfection, and as a result we are seeing an increased incidence in eating disorders in males,” Sondra Kronberg, MS, RD, CDN, director and co-founder of Eating Disorder Associates Treatment and Referral Centers
• “At any given time, 25 percent of men are on diets and 41 percent are dissatisfied with their weight” source:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/25/health/webmd/main972825.shtml
• Males account for 10-15% of all bulimic patients - Carlat, D.J., Camargo, C.A., & Herzog, D.B. (1997). Eating disorders in males: a report on 135 patients. American Journal of Psychiatry: 154: 1127-1132

Girls Of All Ethnic Groups Are Susceptible:

• Over the past few years, there has been increasing evidence of disordered eating occurring among racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S.
• An adolescent health study conducted in Minnesota showed that dieting was associated with weight dissatisfaction and low body pride in all ethnic groups. (Story, 1997).
• Another study found that among the leanest 25% of 6th and 7th grade girls, Hispanics and Asians reported significantly more body dissatisfaction than did white girls. (Robinson, 1996).
• In a survey of 6,504 adolescents, Asian, Black, Hispanic and Caucasian youth all reported attempting to lose weight at similar rates (32.7%, 31.9%, 36.1%, and 39.4%, respectively), while among Native American adolescents, 48.1% were attempting weight loss. (Kilpatrick, Ohannessian, & Bartholomew, 1999).
• A study presented at the 2002 International Conference on Eating Disorders in Boston shows that women of color have many of the same abnormal eating patterns as white females. The study, involving 173 Hispanic, black and white teenagers, found that in seventh grade, Hispanic girls were more likely to report the most frequent weight loss attempts over the previous year and were more likely to binge eat.
• Some socio-cultural influences, including the pervasive media images that embrace a narrowly defined concept of beauty, are particularly troublesome for women of color.  Hall (1995) notes that “people furthest from the dominant ideal of beauty, specifically women of color, may suffer from the psychological effects of low self esteem, poor body image and eating disorders.”
• Rates of minorities with eating disorders are similar to those of white women
• 74% of American Indian girls reported dieting and purging with diet pills
• Essence magazine, in 1994, reported that 53.5% of their respondents, African-American females were at risk of an eating disorder source:  Ethnic Minorities- South Carolina Dept. of Mental Health http://www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm
• Rates of minorities with eating disorders are similar to those of white women
• 74% of American Indian girls reported dieting and purging with diet pills
• Essence magazine, in 1994, reported that 53.5% of their respondents, African-American females were at risk of an eating disorder
• Eating disorders are one of the most common psychological problems facing young women in Japan.
• “Eating disorder treatment centers report anorexia affects people across the spectrum of gender, age, race, class, and sexual preference. Anorexia is not only isolated to North Americans and Europeans, treatment centers serve a full-range of cultures including people from Iran, Korea, Turkey, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Africa. While anorexia is more likely to affect younger women, eating disorders include women and men, gay and straight, rich and poor, old and young
• Community surveys have estimated that between 2 percent and 5 percent of Americans experience binge-eating disorder in a 6-month period

PREVALENCE