Children and teens today are struggling with a major health crisis that is dominating their lives in often determining ways. They live in a culture that tells them that their bodies are wrong and promotes destructive values through media, advertising and the entertainment industries. Weight and eating have become an obsessive concern for American children of all ages.

The crisis consists of four major weight and eating problems. They are dysfunctional eating, eating disorders, overweight and size prejudice. Children are desperate to have the "right" bodies, obsessed with the need to be thin, and fearful that they will not be loved unless they reach near perfection. There should be no surprise that children see, hear

Repeated self-induced vomiting has a variety of negative effects on each component of the digestive system. The backwash of vomit produces unusual patterns of enamel erosion and tooth degeneration, a process that is compounded by decrease in the ability of the saliva to serve its protective function. The throat and the esophagus may be chronically sore or otherwise irritated, and the person may complain of difficulty in swallowing. The abuse of laxatives exacerbates the digestive problems created by starvation. For example, stomach discomfort, cramping, and paradoxically, constipation are all worsened by chronic laxative abuse. Such abuse also leaves the anorexic weaker by making it more difficult for the intestines to absorb fat, protein, and calcium. In cases of extreme abuse the bowel becomes completely dysfunctional.

Anorexics are as out of touch with their emotions are they are with their bodily sensations concerning hunger. Often they do not know what they are feeling or how to express it, a condition known as "alexithymia." Many feel blank or hollow inside, incapable of experiencing anger of finding a genuine sense of pleasure in anything but weight loss.

Anorexia nervosa means "nervous lack of appetite." The phrase refers to a syndrome characterized by loss of appetite, aversion to food, and weight loss. "Lack of appetite" implies a lack of interest in food, and this is most certainly not the case with anorexics. Starvation causes virtually all anorexics to experience and indeed battle intense feelings with hunger. Hunger id denied, it is manifest in an obsessive concern with food, calories, diets, mealtimes, and food preparation. Anorexia nervosa is a "relentless pursuit of excessive thinness." It interferes with the fulfillment of responsibilities to the self and other because it produces intense and irrational fear of becoming fat, an obsession with food and weight control, and a life-threatening weight-loss. A series of starvation induced physical and psychological changes threatens control over eating and motivates more conscientious efforts to reduce. The result is truly a vicious circle of weight loss, hunger, and fear that will become a deadly loop if the process is not acknowledged and reversed.

and take to heart that cultural ideal that to be thin is to have the best of everything and to be fat is to fail.

The cultural features of anorexia nervosa are difficult to specify because the disorder emerges over time as a complex mixture of the relentless drive for thinness, the effects of starvation, and commonly associated psychology disturbances. A significance in weight loss is one of the cardinal features of anorexia nervosa. Most anorexics have two or more significant disturbances in the perception and interpretation of the message from their own bodies. Misperceptions of external body shape constitute a "distorted body image," while inaccuracies in the experience of internal sensation such as hunger or anger are called "disturbances of interceptive awareness."

There are five effects of starvation that anorexics experience. The first one is obsession. Although anorexics stubbornly refuse to eat, they are often preoccupied with food and food preparation. They savor collecting, reading, and talking about books on cooking or nutrition. The second one is unusual eating and drinking habits. Many anorexics develop strange ways of consuming what little food they allow themselves to eat. For example, they may cur each piece of meat into four identical pieces. Then they will only eat three of them, makin

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