A new study recently showed high body dissatisfaction and disordered eating is widespread in both teens and young adults regardless of their socioeconomic status or SES.
A Medical Xpress report specified, School of Public Health at the Minneapolis-based University of Minnesota's Nicole Larson, Ph.D., MPH, together with colleagues, used data from the Eating and Activity Over Time research, which investigated adolescents with a mean age of 14.5 years old, based in 20 Minneapolis-St. Paul area schools between 2009 and 2010, as turning adults in 2018 with a mean age of 22 years old.
As a result, the study authors discovered that among girls, high body dissatisfaction and weight control behaviors like skipping meals for one were more predominant.
On the other hand, regular employment or lifestyle weight control like exercise for one was less widespread in what the researchers call in their research as a low-SES group against the middle- and upper-SES groups.
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Boys in the Low-SES Group
The study published in the Eating Behaviors journal also specified that among boys in the low-SES group, unhealthy weight management behaviors, thinness-oriented dieting, and excessive weight management behaviors like taking diet pills, among others, were more predominant compared to they were among boys in "middle- and upper-SES groups."
When making adjustments for the race, body mass index or BMI, and race, the researchers observed few differences across SES groups.
In a statement, Larson said, there is a need to escalate both the reach and relevance of initiatives to avert body dissatisfaction and disordered eating to guarantee that such initiatives benefit people within SES groups.
Specifically, added Larson, intervention curricula developed to promote healthy eating and activity behaviors must comprise messages about the health impacts of disordered eating.
Disordered Eating and Socioeconomics Status
According to ScienceDirect, disordered eating can be identified say when an athlete develops exercise or eating habits that can be hazardous to his or her wellbeing, such as being very concerned with the calorie and fat the food contains, skipping meals, exercising for burning off of calories and cutting out specific foods to make the body look a specific way.
Meanwhile, according to Maricopa Open Digital Press, SES is an economic and socially integrated total measure of an individual's social and economic position in relation to others, based on their education, occupation, and income.
Nonetheless, SES is more typically used to illustrate an economic variance in society, in general. Typically, socioeconomic status is broken down into high, middle, and low levels to describe the three positions a particular family or a person may fall under in relation to other people.
Previously, researchers had shown an increased interest in the subject of economic inequality and its relation to the populations' health.
Body Dissatisfaction
A Walden University report specified that body dissatisfaction develops when an individual has negative thoughts about his own body image. Also indicated in this information, intense body dissatisfaction can impair an individual's physical and psychological welfare.
More so, when people start to define their own self-worth according to their negative body image, several mental health problems can arise, and these may include eating disorders.
The said university's site defines body image as the manner in which people see themselves physically, as well as their thoughts and feelings resulting from such perceptions.
The National Eating Disorders Collaboration enumerated four main elements of body image. These include perceptual body image or how one sees himself; affective body image or the manner a person feels about his boy; cognitive body image or the way a person thinks about his body; and behavioral body image or behaviors one engages in as a result of his boy image.
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