The Student Room Group
Reply 1
Yeah sometimes, it means they can get away with not eating certain high calorific foods no questions asked.
Reply 2
hmm
theres not a correlation between vegetarians and anorexia, so i dont think so.
What does it matter their limiting food groups, when FOOD is the group they're avoiding anyway?:dontknow:
Champagne-Dahling
What does it matter their limiting food groups, when FOOD is the group they're avoiding anyway?:dontknow:

i guess, as was stated already, it would make it less noticable. For example in a fmaily meal situation, if they couldn't avoid it, they could at least avoid some of the food with no questions asked, in fact i imagine being vegan would widen the foods they could "avoid"

although AFAIk there are certainly no studies that indicate any correlation between anorexia and vegitarianism :s: (again as was stated)
Reply 6
Yes, some do because of their ED and some just happen to be vegetarians before it starts.
--monty---
yeah, my best friend, who was horribly anorexic (went down to 5 stone and was hospitalised for 5 months) is a vegetarian.

She is also now (conveniently for her) allergic to dairy and wheat and all additives due to her body being in sort of "food shock". So she is eating no meat, dairy, additives or wheat, which seems to cut out most things, and doesn't exactly leave an ideal range of foods available to her, also it is easy for her to keep a check on her weight becasue she can just say that she's allergic if she doesn't want something and people just don't question it (but HAH she can't fool ME! :biggrin:).

Also, now she feels sick at the thought of eating these things, because if you don't eat something for a very long time and it causes you to throw up when you do eat it, you generally don't want it ever again. Soooo basically she is probably going to stay off wheat, dairy and meat forever, even when her body recovers and she is no longer allergic.

Anyway hers is a success story I suppose, something like 20% of people die from anorexia, and she was seriously thin, like 36 on the scale of 0-40, 0 being healthy and 40 being dead!! So yeah I am very happy with her progress :smile:

i hope your friend does well in her recovery, she's lucky to have a friend like you.
I think nearlly all anorexics are vegtarian
Reply 9
well, my auntie was when she was younger and she cut out meat from her diet, but she didnt really eat fruit and veg either, apparently she was eating weightwacthers soup all the time
Reply 10
Or worse still, Vegan. :>.<:
There is a correlation between vegetarianism and anorexia, however cause and effect aren't known.

For some people (myself included), they decided to become vegetarian years ago, and it can be seen by some people as a subconcious way to control what you are eating from a young age. However, this is just ideas, there is no proof. Also, not all vegetarians develop eating disorders.

When I was in an EDU, 11 out of the 12 people in there were vegetarian.
Ive suffered with anorexia and bullima for around 3 years, yes I became a vegetarian, I'm considering becoming a vegan though.
It got me out of a lot of dinners, I dont have to eat with family, considering they all eat meat, I have an excuse of ''theres nothing vegetarian in the house'' for not eating.
hmm.
I became a vegetarian while anorexic, but I think I would have done so anyway, as I ate chicken once a week and nothing else. The veggie replacements given to me were fattier and more calorific (cheese-based) which was horrible, but I didn't want to eat meat again. And, having recovered, I have stayed vegetarian and love it :smile:

I understand where the OP is going; for those who aren't brought up in vegetarian households like I was, where parents or whoever aren't really clued up about protein sources (beans and pulses etc), it could be easy to skip meals, or just eat the vegetables or something. And I suppose anorexics very often restrict the different types of food they'll eat as well as the amounts...arg, it could be really effective, but I don't know how prevalent that is...

Useless post ftw...
normal sausage= 150 calories sometimes more
quorn sausage= 48 cals
burger= sometimes as much as 300 cals
veggie burger= can be as low as 70 cals

u do the maths!

plus for bulimics it isnt nice to be throwing up hunks of dead flesh.
It depends on the individual I think. Like some anorexics would have the logic that eating lean protein (meat) burns up faster the calories absorbed than eating carbs/processed cereals which vegetarian meals are usually made up from.

Plus who ever said protein was high in calories? Like one slice of turkey meat (for sandwiches) contains less than 25 calories.

Kirsty

xoxo
I was anorexic some year ago, and have always been vegetarian... THERE IS NO CORRELATION THO!
I was vegetarian long before I became anorexic, but quite a lot of the people on support sites I spoke to became vegetarian or vegan largely because it made it so much easier for them to not eat without being hassled. The number of vegetarians in the general public is rising though and plenty of the anorexics I knew still ate meat since everyone deals with it in a different way so I doubt a significant proportion of anorexics choose to become vegetarian.
Yeah it is definitely a tactic some anorexics use it's so much easier to be able to give a legitimate ' i can't eat that burger because i'm vegetarian' than 'i don't like burgers' or whatever!!! i am vegan now it's a lot easier i'm not anorexic but i do have to controll what i eat it really makes it easier.
Yes. Lots of people with EDs, myself included, become vegitarian or vegan as it can be a useful excuse to get out of eating, as well as the fact that most meat substitutes have less calories than actual meat.