Healthy Cooking

Question: Can anyone translate this paragraph into simple terms for me?
I was told to read a particular chapter to prepare for an exam and within the chapter it says this, but I just cannot make make any sense of it. Im not very good with words. Could anyone help me understand what its saying or even just give me a summery of what it means? Thanks, here’s the passage:

It is surely more than coincidence that societal changes in attitudes to female body shape and dieting have occurred at the same time that diagnoses of anorexia appear to have multiplied (Burch 1978). Moreover, a fear of fatness and preoccupation with body weight are relatively recent phenomena in anorexia (Russell, 1986). In fact weight-related fears in those diagnosed as anorexic were not reported outside of France until the 1930s (Habbermas 1989) and were rarely mentioned in the literature on anorexia before the 1960s (Casper, 1983), the decade in which the ideal of the thin female body significantly increased its hold in contemporary Western culture. The specificity in the distribution of diagnoses of anorexia in terms of sex, age, ethnicity and socio-economic class, as well as its recent increase (Garner et al, 1983; Hsu 1984), also suggests a cultural influence. Anorexia appears to be a largely Western phenomenon (Edwards-Hewitt and Gray, 1993) and a problem associated in particular with young, usually white, “middle-class” women. Some research, however, does indicate that diagnoses of eating disorders including anorexia are spreading across all socio-economic classes and ethnic groups (Pumariega et al. 1984; Edwards-Hewitt and Gray, 1993). Asian English schoolgirls, for example, have been found by some to have higher EAT (Eating attitudes test) scores than their Caucasian counterparts (Mumford and Whitehouse, 1988) and “eating disorders” have been found in women of all ethnic backgrounds (Dolan et al, 1990). Interestingly, it has also been found that “eating attitudes” in young Hispanic American women were correlated with “acculturation” to American culture (Pumariega, 1986). Thus, the spread of “eating disorders” to all socio-economic and ethnic groups might be understood in terms of an increasing dissemination of Western cultural ideals of female beauty/thinness and dieting (Edwards-Hewitt and Gray, 1993). The pernicious effects of the diet and fashion industries on many women’s lives (and deaths) cannot be underestimated. Yet, it would be both superficial and simplistic to attempt to explain anorexia only in terms of cultural pressures for slimness, to characterize anorexia as a “slimmer’s” disease (Malson, 1992). Many socio-cultural explanations of anorexia are, however, limited to a documentation of the increased emphasis on a thin body and the increased prevalence of dieting in contemporary society. As such they tend to rely on a notion of internalization in which “anorexics” are conceptualized as “super-dieters” (e.g Polivy and Herman, 1985), as over-adhering to omnipresent cultural ideals of feminine beauty as thinness. They therefore tend to focus on thinness and dieting to the exclusion of other aspects of anorexia and female subjectivity, and without exploring the complex cultural and political significances of female slenderness. For anorexia is also associated with low self-esteem, with a lack of sense of self, of independant autonomy and control, as well as with a “fear of fat” or “relentless pursuit of thinness” (eg Bruch 1973). It has been described as “a communicative disorder” which is experienced as a means of taking control over one’s body, as a pseudo-solution to intra-and interpersonal difficulties (Bruch 1978; Caskey 1989). And culture may also play a role in the “promotion” of such difficulties. The cultural dynamics of our Western post-industrial society may foster many of the psychological conflicts around gender, identity, self-esteem and autonomy (Appels 1986) that have been associated with anorexia (Malson 1995).

Answer:

Answer by worldisone
not eating is not the main problem. its the thinking and the action. hence its psychological. its the mind that destroy the body
media always portray women as slim so it gets ingrained into our heads so we starve. easily influenced. also they have low self esteem.
used to be a white only but now spreading to other groups.
[peculiar to usa. europe is almost non-existent. japan is zero and yet female are slim and thin - they have the 80% rule - stop eating when the stomach is 80% full]

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