Researchers at the University of Alberta recently studied eating disorder articles published in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Seventeen. They wanted to find out what these types of magazines were saying about eating disorders, and whether the information they were publishing was helpful or harmful.

"...whereas most articles mentioned the exact menu used by eating disorder sufferers when they were ill, fewer than 15 percent gave a similar description of what sufferers ate after they had recovered. Similarly, a sufferer's weight when they were ill was mentioned more often than their healthy weight."

The researchers often found that many articles talked about weight loss strategies used by people suffering from anorexia, while barely more than half mentioned the potentially fatal dangers of the disorder. The obvious bent towards highlighting the disorders and not the dangers or the recovery has researchers believing that people attempting to recover from eating disorders should avoid these types of magazines altogether.

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Labels: health_care, media_influences, motivation