Several studies have shown a link between eating a vegetarian diet and eating disorders.

It is not the green food itself that is problematic, but that vegetarian diet in people with eating disorders can function as a socially accepted way to limit what foods you eat and how much you get.

Anna Bardone Cone is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She has done one of the most famous studies on the link between vegetarian diet and eating disorders.

She wanted to find out if it is really more common to eat whole greens among people who suffer from eating disorders and to investigate what they state for the reasons for their dietary choices.

In the study, she compared young women with eating disorders with a control group consisting of healthy women of the same age.

It turned out that 52 percent of those with eating disorders ate whole vegetarian.

In the control group, the figure was only 12 percent.

“Vegetarianism developed as a smokescreen”

As researchers begin to delve into the reasons for dietary choices, the trend becomes even clearer.

As many as 68 percent of the young women who developed eating disorders in Anna Bardone Cone's study believed that their vegetarianism was directly linked to the disease and that they ate green to keep their calorie intake down.

- In people with eating disorders who are vegetarians, vegetarianism is generally developed as a smokescreen to be able to maintain and hide the eating disorder, she says.

Camouflages

its eating disorder

Bardone Cone, who is himself a vegetarian, emphasizes that a vegetarian diet is not worse or less nutritious than the food omnivores put in themselves.

Examinations of the nutritional content of various vegetarian diets show that they are not nutritionally insufficient, either for adults or for teenagers.

Herbivores, however, must eat larger, well-balanced portions to get what the body needs.

But Anna Bardone Cone believes that people with eating disorders often state that they are vegetarians in order to control their diet.

By calling yourself a vegetarian, you avoid eating the food that the rest of the family or various social contexts require.

Instead, you can control your calorie intake and opt out of food, without it being noticed as much and thus camouflage your eating disorder.

“Ask why”

Anna Bardone Cone thinks that a vegetarian diet has several benefits for, among other things, the environment and health, but believes that it can be good to dare to ask questions about the motive behind when a teenage child suddenly becomes a vegetarian.

- Ask why and why right now, she says.

I think it is good to have a discussion about what motivates him and what is behind it.

The documentary series "Eating Disorder" consists of three episodes that are released once a week.

Watch it here on SVT Play.