Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of young American women report having an abnormal reaction to food and 10 percent say they have symptoms of disorders such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa or binge eating, a new survey finds. Researchers found that 75 percent of the 4,000 women who responded to an online survey eat, think and behave strangely around food.  The abnormal behaviors included skipping meals as well as binging and purging, the researchers said. “Our survey found that these behaviors cut across racial and ethnic lines and are not limited to any one group. Women who identified their ethnic backgrounds as Hispanic or Latina, White, Black or African American and Asian were all represented among the women who reported unhealthy eating behaviors,” Cynthia R. Bulik, a professor of eating disorders and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program, said in a prepared statement. Eating habits that some women think are normal — such as skipping meals, avoiding carbohydrates and, in some cases, extreme eating such as eating all meat or all White foods – may actually be signs of an eating disorder, which is often linked to emotional and physical distress. Some experts say the behavior is a direct result of the pressure to be thin balanced against the growing reality that Americans are getting fatter. “What we found most surprising was the unexpectedly high number of women who engage in unhealthy purging activities. More than 31 percent of women in the survey reported that in an attempt to lose weight, they had induced vomiting or had taken laxatives, diuretics or diet pills at some point in their lives,” Bulik said. The survey was conducted by SELF magazine in partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While there’s a widespread belief that eating disorders affect mostly young women, the survey found that women in the 30s and 40s had about the same rates of problem eating as younger women. The survey is expected to be published in the May issue of SELF magazine and to be presented today (May 17) at the Academy for Eating Disorders’ International Conference on Eating Disorders, in Seattle. Recent studies suggests that even though African-American women are heavier than White women — 49 percent of Black females are overweight as opposed to 33 percent of White females — they are less likely to have disordered eating than White women and tend to be more satisfied with their body images.  The same holds true for teen girls, according to a Wesleyan University study published in March. But, as the Self survey shows, Black women are not immune to eating issues, particularly with regard to dieting, and tend to use more over-the-counter diet pills to control their weight. 

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