Eating disorders effect an estimated 5 million people in the U.S. And 10% of women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa will die of it.

These were some of the figures given during a screening of the HBO documentary "Thin," shown yesterday in The Leo auditorium. The Salt Lake Film Center presented the film along with Dr. Tess Jones, Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at the University of Utah, who led a discussion afterward.

Lauren Greenfield produced the movie Thin, an HBO documentary released in 2006. Filmed inside a Florida treatment center, the documentary focuses on four young women coping in their own ways with severe eating disorders. Greenfield did an incredible job capturing clinic life by almost disappearing, so that the girls and clinic staff appear not to even recognize they are being filmed. The film is intense throughout and emotionally jarring, showing how each of the different women struggle with their own obsessive behaviors, all desiring to be "thin."

Following the film audience members stayed late to partake in discussing the huge challenges women diagnosed with eating disorders face. Many expressed concerns over the growing number of teenage girls obsessing over dieting. A mother/ daughter couple spoke up and shared their own troubles with anorexia nervosa. And some physicians attending commented that eating disorders are in fact just symptoms of larger problems, like unhappiness, depression, or mental illness.

Without doubt, It's a complex problem that extends beyond food, dieting or body image. It's an issue often embedded in personal, familial, mental health, and cultural problems. In our society as a whole it's common for many, many women to have body image anxieties that effect their eating habits. Certainly someone all of us know and love struggles with it everyday. It's important we keep talking about this problem and how it effects all of us, especially young women.

As a side observation, with our on-going Body Secrets project here at The Leonardo, many anonymous submissions by visitors are about body image concerns, and eating disorders. It shows that this problem is certainly effecting our local community as bad as anywhere else.


Some signs of an eating disorder are:
1. Drastic weight loss
2. Preoccupation with counting calories
3. weighing yourself several times a day
4. excessive exercise
5. Binge eating or purging
6. Food rituals, like taking tiny bites, skipping food groups or re-arranging food on the plate.
7. Avoiding meals or only wanting to eat alone.
8. Taking laxatives or diuretics
9. smoking to curb appetite.
10. Persistent view of yourself as fat that worsens despite weight loss.

(This was excerpted from a guide accompanying the film "Thin," Recognizing And Dealing With Eating Disorders. This guide also provides steps to a positive body image. You can find it here).

If you have any experiences with or thoughts about eating disorders, please share.