• Question: Why are those with food intolerances more likely to develop eating disorders?

    Asked by anon-283004 on 10 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 10 Mar 2021:

      Hi CharmainK,

      I think this can be seen in both cause and effect.

      So if someone has an eating disorder, they can use their food intolerances as a means of enabling this disordered eating. So things like being anorexic and also lactose intolerant, they can use this to further justify eating (or not eating) certain foods.

      It can also be seen as causal, a slippery slope of disordered eating. You cut out certain foods and lose weight, which can cause a vicious cycle.

      Having said all of this, a lot, if not most people with food intolerances do not have an eating disordered, nor even any issues around food. So why do some people with these go on to develop a full-blown eating disorder? is there something genetic or some environmental factors that come into play?

    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 10 Mar 2021:

      Hi. This is not my area; I’m a resilience researcher. But one of the researchers on our PhD programme at uni is working on a project about orthorexia and mental health (It’s not the same with food tolerance; unhealthy obsession with eating ‘pure’ food). But there’s a parallel. There are a number of studies that show that the common symptoms of food intolerance can be experienced more frequently by people with eating disorders, suggesting a shared cause such as anxiety.

    • Photo: Ellen Smith

      Ellen Smith answered on 10 Mar 2021: last edited 10 Mar 2021 3:03 pm

      Really interesting question! It’s not my area but I’ve done a little reading around it. There is some work that looks at ‘true’ diagnosed food intolerances and avoidance of food types due to the eating disorder. It seems that often eating disorder patients have self-reported (or non-diagnosed) intolerances. In which patients might use a food intolerance (diagnosed or not) as a reason to avoid eating whole food groups (such as dairy or gluten) and justify their eating behaviour. For example in patients with orthorexia (an extreme fixation on healthy eating) they commonly self-diagnose themselves with intolerances in order to further reduce the types of foods that they eat.
      They might self-diagnose intolerances if it gives them unpleasant gastrointestinal issues (like bloating or diarrhoea), although often these are caused due to the restriction of that food, as the gut hasn’t been exposed to it. So these unpleasant effects, might encourage them to keep on avoiding that food type.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 11 Mar 2021:

      Hi Charmain, this is not an area I know much about (eating disorders), but based on what I know I would guess that people with intolerances have to focus on their food and what they eat more in general than people without intolerances, and so are then more prone to developing eating disorders down the line as they are already really focused on their eating habits.

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