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Shocking statistics emerge showing one in five 12 year old girls resort to forced vomiting to lose weight. This is an indictment on our culture's insistence on presenting unattainable and unrealistic role models for females and also creating then feeding of the discontent women feel in order to secure cosmetic and fashion sales.
One in five 12-year-old girls fast, vomit to shed kilos
Daily Telegraph, Tamara McLean, November 06, 2007
AUSSIE girls as young as 12 are commonly resorting to dangerous diet fads like fasting and vomiting to try to shed their puppy fat, new research has revealed. A study of 8,000 children and teenagers has found almost one in five girls - 17 per cent - aged 12 and 13 have used at least one radical weight control technique.
Fasting was most common, practised by 12 per cent of these girls, followed by vomiting, excessive exercising and chewing but not swallowing food.
But even more concerning, says dietician and health educator Dr Jenny O'Dea, was the sharp rise in girls adopting these habits at 14 and 15, when their bodies were naturally "rounding out''.
She said the results, to be presented at an eating disorders conference in Adelaide tomorrow, were proof girls should be taught about puberty and body image from the age of nine, while still at primary school.
"We've got these extremely young girls using these dangerous fad techniques from as young as 12 which is shocking in itself,'' said Dr O'Dea, from the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney.
"Then the numbers doing it shoot up further at 14 once they start to put on that natural layer of body fat normal for all girls in the last stages of puberty.
Continue reading at daily telegraph
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