SOCIO CULTURAL PRESSURES

Socio Cultural Pressures

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how college men think and feel about food and their bodies. This assignment identified some of the risk factors associated with disordered eating attitudes and behavior in college men. These factors include body image and the influence on eating attitudes and behavior, historical variables, such as history of childhood obesity, family and peer influence, sexuality, and participation in competitive athletics. Eating disorders (ED's), stereotypically described as “women's diseases”. The results of past ED research and literature has centered on females. In 1998, Kaplan, and, Sadock reported that EDs such as Anorexia Nervosa (AN) occurred 10 to 20 times more often in females than in males, other research suggests that the ratio of females to males with AN is 4:1, and, for Bulimia Nervosa (BN), there is 1 male for every 8 to 11 females. It was reported that Binge Eating Disorder (BED) seems to occur almost equally in males and females. Other data suggest that disordered eating behavior that does not, meet the full criteria, for a diagnosable ED, and found, more often in men. Today, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) report that five to fifteen percent of individuals with anorexia nervosa, or, bulimia nervosa are male, and, thirty-five percent of those with binge eating disorder are males. Therefore, it was seen that socio cultural pressures create a huge impact on young males' minds regarding their body image.

Socio cultural Pressures

Outline for the paper

Eating disorders (EDs), characterized, by severe disturbances in eating behavior. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, EDs include anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and ED not otherwise specified (EDNOS), which includes binge-eating disorder (BED). EDs can occur on a continuum from mild dietary preoccupations to concerns about body weight and shape to extreme weight-control methods (e.g., fasting, purging, excessive exercise, binge-eating), and, development of full-blown disorders such as AN and BN. In this assignment, eating disorders refer to AN, BN, BED, and other disordered eating behavior that does not meet the full criteria for proper diagnosis. Millions of men struggle with body image issues, and men's rates of diagnosable EDs are increasing. Many men, obsessed with counting calories, preoccupied, with their weight, diet frequently, exercise excessively, and binge and purge. ED symptoms, reported to be the same for men, and, women. Their risk factors or pathways to disordered eating behavior, thought, to be quite different. Biological, psychological, and social factors have all been hypothesized to have a role in development of EDs among males, but empirical research and literature describing these factors are lacking (Drewnowski, 634).

The literature identifies some “risk factors” that may contribute to development of EDs in males. These primary risk factors include body image dissatisfaction and sociocultural pressures to have a certain body type, homosexuality, childhood obesity, and participation in competitive athletics Negative body image and idealized ideas about body shape and weight, often seen, as ...