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Diet-Focused Magazines May be Harming Female Teens

Females who frequently read magazine articles on diet or weight loss were twice as likely to fast, skip meals, and smoke cigarettes than those who did not read such articles. Use of extreme measures, such as vomiting or taking laxatives, was three times greater in the highest frequency magazine readers compared with those who did not read magazines.

Data were taken from the Project EAT (Eating Among Teens), a 5-year longitudinal study involving 2,516 adolescents. Participants from 31 Minnesota public junior and senior high schools completed surveys in 1999 and in 2004. Respondents were divided into groups based on their response to a single question: "How often do you read magazine articles in which dieting or weight loss are discussed?" Answer options included: never, hardly ever, sometimes, and often. Female readers were more likely (44%) to be frequent readers of diet or weight-loss magazines compared with males (14%).

Researchers suggest that parents of adolescent females limit the child's access to magazines that portray "thin ideals and dieting," and that mothers avoid buying the magazines. They also suggest that clinicians remove diet and weight-loss magazines from waiting areas and examination rooms to avoid reinforcing potentially harmful social messages.

Van den Berg, P, Neumark-Sztainer D, Hannan P, et al.: Is dieting advice from magazines helpful or harmful? Five-year associations with weight-control behaviors and psychological outcomes in adolescents. Pediatrics 119:30–37, 2007 .

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Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                What's this?