Likelihood of Success

Aaron Morris:

I’ve always considered vegetarianism to be an eating disorder in many. And while I haven’t yet convinced the American Psychiatric Association to include vegetarianism in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), I now have research to support that vegetarianism is a strong indicator of a possible eating disorder.

Stay with me and I’ll explain.

A recent dietary study was led by nutritionist Ramona Robinson-O’Brien, an assistant professor at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota. The study concluded that adolescent and young adult vegetarians were four times more likely than their meat-eating peers to binge eat and engage in extreme weight-control measures such as taking laxatives and forcing themselves to vomit. The study further concluded that teenage vegetarians as well as young experimenters — those who try it but abandon it — may be at higher risk for other eating disorders compared with their peers.

The study authors suggest that parents and doctors should be extra vigilant when teens suddenly become vegetarians. Although teens may say they’re trying to protect animals, they may actually be trying to camouflage some unhealthy eating behaviors.

It’s a little lean for my taste  — plenty of non-teens are vegetarians, and some of them are not nut cases, from what I can tell — but I like the cut of his argument.  Well done!