Presence of Disordered Eating among Mexican Teenage Women from a Semi-Urban Area: Its Relation to the Cultural Hypothesis

The idea of culture as a risk factor for eating disorders has been supported by the higher frequencies of such disorders in the industrialized countries. In a non-urban area of the state of Michoacan, Mexico, we found elevated frequencies of dangerous eating behaviours among teenage girls. We used a checklist, previously employed in a survey of Mexico City teenagers, with a sample of 458 girls (mean age1⁄4 16.5 yr). We found that 27.9 per cent of them were seriously concerned about weighing too much, 14.3 per cent practised dieting or fasting in order to lose weight and 2.4 per cent binged and vomited. These percentages are higher than those of a sample of Mexico City girls. Nevertheless, we suggest that culture should still be considered a risk factor, and propose that a more precise definition of the term is needed in order to understand its effects upon the presence of disordered eating. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.