[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Race and Nutrition in Children
Obesity is an "eating disturbances" that refers to those conditions where body size and manipulation of food intake are used to solve or camouflage inner and outer adjustment problems (Stewart, D. A., Carter, J. C., Drinkwater, J., Hainsworth, J., & Fairburn, C. G. 2001). Clinically these disturbances are recognized as obesity, characterized by excessive accumulation of fat tissue, and psychologically by helpless ineffectiveness in the face of bodily urges and social demands, or as anorexia nervosa, extreme leanness and cachexia, representing an over rigid effort at establishing a sense of control and identity while suffering from an all-pervasive sense of ineffectiveness.
Severe psychiatric problems are also encountered in those who maintain what looks like a normal weight but who are continuously preoccupied with their appearance and dietary manipulations, a group referred to as "thin fat people." According to Adams et al (2000) others alternate between phases of rigid reducing followed by rapid weight increase, seemingly unable to stabilize at any weight; they may lose and gain a total of as much as 500 pounds during the adolescent years.
There is probably no other group of people as concerned and preoccupied with their physique and appearance as adolescents, before and after pubescence. They are forever worried about their size, whether they are too tall or too short, about the adequacy of their sexual maturation, and about their attractiveness in general; but most of all they are preoccupied with their weight (Coleman, M., & Vaughn, S. 2000). The fear of being too fat, or rated as such, parallels the weight consciousness of our society, which condemns even mild degrees of overweight as ugly, undesirable, and a sign of self-indulgence. Formerly an exceedingly rare disorder, anorexia nervosa seems to be on the increase in Western countries.......
