Eating behavior disorders

Food behavior is the hallmark of actions and attitudes about food. Nutrition does not mean only “food”, but a correlation between the psychological, biological (neuro-hormonal, digestive, etc.) traits of the person, as an individuality and as part of the socio-professional environment.

Currently, nutrition is influenced by a mix of factors related to cultural or religious habits, time or financial constraints, and even a certain trend created by the media. Nutrition involves increasingly difficult choices, defining our lifestyle, in addition to the physiological features genetically programmed in our biology -hunger and satiety- that should control our eating behavior.

This biology was disturbed by the disorder of neuro-hormonal mechanisms responsible for the prevalence of appetite regarding the hunger sensation and implicitly the occurrence of sensory-gustatory pleasure in frustrating situations.

In the absence of optimal dietary choices and proper eating behavior, metabolic disorders occur due to the imbalance of our weight and nutritional status, most often in the sense of overweight. Obesity comes with physical and then mental transformations, responsible (at the pressure of society) for assuming a dysfunctional eating behavior, based on the intermittent practice of weight loss diets (slimming diets).

Finally, these diets may be the prelude to eating disorders that are based on a psychological dysfunction with serious health implications, anorexia and bulimia being more than eating disorders, defining real forms of neurosis in the contemporary society.