Onset of adolescent eating disorders: population based cohort study over 3 years

The best means of tackling the increase in obesity in young people is to encourage them to take exercise rather than go on a diet, say researchers from Australia in this week's BMJ. In their study of nearly 2,000 male and female students aged 14-15 over a period of three years, Professor George Patton and colleagues from the University of Melbourne and the Royal Children's Hospital Research Institute, found that female adolescents who undertook heavy dieting were 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who didn't diet. Those girls who dieted moderately, were five times more at risk.

The authors conclude that dieting is the most important predictor of new eating disorders and that the differences in the prevalence of disorders between the sexes were largely accounted for by the high rates of dieting at a younger age and psychiatric morbidity in girls. They say that in adolescents, controlling weight by exercise rather than diet restriction seems to carry less risk of developing eating disorders.

Contact:

Professor George Patton, Centre for Adolescent Health, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Parkville Victoria, Australia Email: patton@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au

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Contact: Jill Shepherd
jshepherd@bma.org.uk
44-171-383-6529
BMJ-British Medical Journal
19-Mar-1999