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“Eating disorders have been described as the sacrificing of millions of young girls to the gods of societal beauty, whereby slenderness represents “the ultimate good” and obesity the ultimate shame.” -Gilbert & Commerford

Background information we want you to know

Mental health issues are often a taboo subject, and such is the case for one of its most common examples- eating disorders. Psychiatric disabilities including Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) and the recent (unofficial) addition of Orthorexia have become shockingly common and in some way praised. Eating and fasting have always been associated with the spiritual idea of purity (Grenfell, 2006) but are currently depleted outside of this affiliation. We live in an era of fitness freaks and miracle diets where self-declared health ‘gurus’ tell us what and when we should or should not eat. Foods are unjustifiably labeled morally ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and people are judged by the way their body looks or how much they weigh. A food coach Bríd McNulty (2020) tweeted that “convincing someone they should obsess about every little thing they eat is a highly efficient way to take their power.” The fact that more than 70% of the affected are female (derived from Beat’s statistics) only reflects the ongoing gender inequality.

*disclaimer: due to the female-concentrated research and the abundance of material linking spirituality with EDs among women in particular, this project, too, concentrates on this gender. However, it is crucial to indicate that (according to Beat) 25% of those affected by EDs are male.

What you will never read or hear about on social media is that dieting might, in fact, be both physically and mentally harmful to your organism. A study by Greer and Cooper (2016) indicated that it might be a triggering factor to developing an ED. Dooner (2019) claims that the reason for this is that any form of restricting food intake is not natural for humans, for our bodies it is essentially no different from a famine. Not providing your body with sufficient energy and nutrients triggers various physiological responses like changing the hormones and brain chemistry, food fixation (extreme hunger and cravings), slower metabolism or weaker muscles amongst others (Ibid.) Moreover, it has been shown that AN has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disability (Arcelus et al, 2011).

While many features of modern EDs are bound culturally, Davis and Nguyen (2014) note that it is vital to recognize how “the theme of self-starvation takes different forms in different cultural and historical contexts.” Knowing how meaningful food is in the theological context, we are going to address how religion, or widely understood spirituality, contribute to the discussion of EDs. In this project we will first explore the idea of theodicy and then examine particular religious perspectives to analyze how they can both support and hinder our mental wellbeing.