Binge Eating Disorder has made some astonishing strides in the past few years. First, we go back a decade to an article titled, “11 Countries with the Highest Rates of Eating Disorders in the World.”
At that point in time, it was already impossible to ignore the influence of media on the behavior of people, especially young ones. The author noted that about 50% of teen girls and 30% of teen boys were restricting their diets in some way, with weight loss as the goal. Of those dieters, it was estimated that around one-quarter of them eventually wound up with eating disorders. Worse yet, at best guess, most of them never tried to get treatment.
As one of the 11 countries most troubled in this way, the piece surprisingly named Bangladesh, which had in 1974 attracted world attention and aid because of famine conditions that killed as many as a million and a half people. Given that history, it stretches the imagination to picture the inhabitants suffering from any sort of eating problem other than starvation.
Really?
That Vietnam, Pakistan, and Indonesia would be named as prominent eating disorder hotspots is also disconcerting. Another surprise to find in this category at the time was Brazil, with around 37% of its teenagers into binge eating, and almost one-quarter of them being “serial dieters.”
At around the same time, a WHO survey of world mental health noted that very few countries other than the United States even kept track of Binge Eating Disorder (BED), and that fewer than half of either BED or bulimia nervosa sufferers ever received treatment. Apparently, BED was not at the time regarded as a very serious problem, but the authors of the document warned that in terms of public health, it mattered at least as much as bulimia. They added,
Low treatment rates highlight the clinical importance of questioning patients about eating problems even when not included among presenting complaints.
In 2021, a specially-purposed world map designed to indicate the spread of only two disorders, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, was published. It showed Australia as the undisputed winner, with about 2% of the country’s population suffering from one or the other.
All over the place
When researchers want to know about the prevalence of binge-eating disorder in various parts of the world, a number of questions immediately present themselves. How should the areas be differentiated? Strictly by national borders? That would be the easiest way, because research tends to be done, if at all, by a particular country’s academic and scientific establishments. Or does it make more sense to categorize unhealthy people by race? By political dogma? By religion? By language? By gender and/or sexual orientation?
A recently published cross-cultural study, with the goal of setting up a standardized framework for assessing Binge Eating Disorder, stated that it…
[…] aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Binge Eating Disorder Screener-7 (BEDS-7) across 42 countries and 26 languages, assessing its reliability and validity […] in diverse cultural contexts.
The researchers note that BED, which is associated with non-trivial risks to psychological and physical health, is ”often underdiagnosed across diverse cultural and clinical settings.” Furthermore, most people who have it do not seek treatment directly for the condition itself, but look first for help with other physical and mental disorders. Along with depression and anxiety, individuals with BED also tend to have histories of substance use (or abuse). The authors note,
When translating and applying questionnaires measuring eating disorders across different cultural contexts, challenges arise due to varying cultural norms related to food, body image, and mental health, which can affect how individuals interpret and respond to questions.
Additionally, there is the fact that many people with disordered eating behaviors do not know it. Women may think it is perfectly normal to obsess over their bodies. Men may believe it is unmasculine to even think about such issues. Researchers also find that, depending on which country information is gathered from, certain groups are under-represented. People with more education and less self-consciousness about their sexuality, for instance, tend to show up for surveys and reply to questionnaires.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “11 Countries with the Highest Rates of Eating Disorders in the World,” InsiderMonkey.com, 06/12/15
Source: “The prevalence and correlates of binge eating disorder in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys,” nih.gov, 05/01/14
Source: “Eating disorders prevalence, 2021,” OurWorldInData.org, 2021
Source: “Cross-Cultural Validation of the Binge Eating Disorder Screener-7 (BEDS-7) Across 42 Countries,” Wiley.com, 03/05/25
Image by Mohamed Hassan/Pixabay
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