Why are girls so much more likely to develop eating disorders than boys?
Eating disorders are much more common in girls (95%) than in boys (5%) and this situation appears to depend on different behavioural responses of girls and boys to food restriction. Experiments have shown that after healthy volunteers of both sexes were subjected to food restriction, boys subsequently compensated for the lack of food by eating much more food when it became available and by eating faster than they usually do. When girls were given access to food after a period of food restriction, however, they ate less food than they normally do and they ate it more slowly than usual. This experiment suggests that girls can develop an anorexic pattern of eating by going on a food-restriction diet but also has a capacity to stand starvation better than boys. Boys eat more when needed but girls do not. This biological constraint combined with the strong social pressure on young women to be slim, makes it likely that they will restrict their food intake at some point, making them vulnerable to developing an eating disorder.