How often do you think about what you eat? What you weigh? What other people see when they look at you?

I used to think of the idea of eating disorders as one that was almost fantastical; a rare occurrence. The reality was, I didn’t notice them at first because they had been normalized. Having just saltines for lunch was typical. skipping breakfast because you “don’t like it” is expected. Losing weight is good.

My best friend from High School now attends the University of Alabama. After she was accepted, she immediately knew she wanted to be a part of a sorority — a big part of student life at her school. Her entire preparation was centered around appearance. Buying the right dresses, the right shoes, the right jewelry. It wasn’t until after she was admitted into a sorority that she started to talk about the differences between them. Girls line up hoping to be accepted into any sisterhood at all, not stopping to think about some of their methods. She talked about groups that would tell you which parts of your body needed to lose weight as part of initiation, and houses you couldn’t get into if you didn’t fit a certain beauty standard.

A study by the National Library of Medicine found that 13.5% of women earning an undergraduate degree have eating disorders. It’s important to note that eating disorders are not isolated to the female population as 3.6% of male undergraduate students were also found to have eating disorders. It was also found that in general, eating disorders are more prevalent among college students, with the prevalence of eating disorders decreasing by 3.6% between undergraduate and graduate students in the aforementioned survey.

I invite you to think about, the environment in which these students are operating. The issue can be looked at through a lens of food itself — not having enough money to buy sufficient groceries, not having a kitchen to prepare meals, or potentially not having cooking skills at all.

These are all real issues that impact eating disorders. It’s important to understand, however, that emotional conditions can impact eating habits just as much. How might the sorority telling their “sister” to lose weight impact what she eats the next day? What about the idea of the “freshman fifteen”?

In the previously mentioned study, they asked students a series of questions. 33.8% of undergraduate women said that they believe themselves to be fat even when others say they’re thin. 16.8% of women said that food dominated their life. 4.9% said that they had lost more than 14 pounds over the last three months.

What we eat isn’t always merely a product of our physical environment, but is also often reflective of our mental and emotional environments. The survey found that a total of 23.9% of undergraduate women had some type of depression and 6.3% had generalized anxiety.

This is not to say that eating disorders can only ever be a product of mental illness. However, I’d invite the exploration of what exactly it is about collegiate environments that makes eating disorders so much more prevalent, especially among our female populations. How can we suppress the narrative that size, and diet correlate to our value?

Resources

Eisenberg, Daniel, et al. “Eating Disorder Symptoms among College Students: Prevalence, Persistence, Correlates, and Treatment-Seeking.” Journal of American College Health, vol. 59, no. 8, 2011, pp. 700–707., https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2010.546461.

University, Penn State. “Explore Your Dining Options.” Penn State, The Pennsylvania State University, 2022, https://liveon.psu.edu/university-park/dining-options.