Other cultures

The statistics in this blog entry are from three different sources, so they don't analyse exactly the same thing and I can't be certain that they define anorexia in exactly the same way. This basically means that any conclusions are scientifically invalid, but I'll keep my opinions nonetheless.

I've spend considerable time in Finland including a three month stretch last summer. I noticed a lot of things about the country but one of them was that the population was, on the whole, thinner. Sure, there were overweight people, but a lot less than I see in England and usually not quite as fat. I don't remember seeing a single morbidly obese person in my time there.

The canteen at the place I worked served, on the whole, healthy food and there was always an option to go for the "green line." This was a wide variety of salads with something light as the main meal. It was very rare for there to be anything particularly unhealthy. Even the deserts were usually of the stewed fruit and yoghurt variety. Occasionally, there were cakes as an option, but no more than once a week at most.

There was also a lot of emphasis on exercise and sport. Children play a lot of sport at school, there are wide cycle paths through the city and alongside the main roads (something I wish Britain would imitate) and people walked quite a lot.

Then, there might be a genetic element to it. Finland gets incredibly cold in winter, so maybe, over the centuries, Finns have bred a tendency to a good metabolism because keeping the body warm means they're more likely to survive the cold season. Certainly, the Finns I saw didn't seem to skimp on the portion sizes and were still a healthy size.

Whatever the reason for it, the Finnish population appear, on the surface, to be a much healthier group than in the UK. They appear to have a much healthier relationship to food and exercise than those of us in the US or the UK. From what I'd seen and the people I'd met, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find out that eating disorders were rare in Finland.

So let's look at the stats.

According to a nationwide study, 2.2% of Finnish young women suffer from severe anorexia nervosa. Up to 5% of Finnish women suffer anorexic symptoms in their lifetime.

That doesn't look very good. Then again, there are some large figures floating around the web stating how a huge proportion of people in America have an eating disorder. I looked solely at the numbers relating to anorexia, since those were the only figures I'd found for Finland.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health in the US, somewhere between 0.5 and 3.7% of females suffer anorexic symptoms in their lifetime.

That's low. That's a lot lower than in Finland. Now, maybe the definition is less strict in Finland. Certainly, I feel that the American definition has some problems with it, because it focuses on physical rather than psychological symptoms. I can't be sure. But it's obvious the result I was expecting doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

So let's look at the UK. According to the eating disorder charity Beat, 1-2% of women are anorexic at any one time. Comparing this with the other Finnish figure now, it seems that more than that were anorexic at the time the study was performed.

Again, different definitions of anorexia might be responsible, but it seems obvious to me that appearances can be deceiving. On the surface, it might seem that Finland has a much better relationship with food and exercise than we do in the UK, but anorexia is at least as common. Maybe Finland has lower rates for binge eating disorder, compulsive over eating, bulimia or ednos. Maybe not. Until the results of a nationwide survey on those released on the web, I can't be sure.

I think it's reasonable to believe that eating disorders appear in every country, even ones where the culture and social behaviour is quite different from that of the UK. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to blame our schools, media and culture.