Obsessively Instagramming photos of your meals might be a sign of a problem much bigger than making your followers hungry. The Mental Health chair of the Canadian Obesity Network says there is a link between posting these photos online and a new epidemic of eating disorders.
"You don't take pictures of who you're with, you take pictures of what you're eating," said Dr. Valerie Taylor, the chief psychiatrist at the Women's College Hospital in Toronto, adding that signs of such disorders might be when a person's Instagram feed makes a switch from pictures of people and friends, to pictures of food.
"For some people who have the predisposition for weight behaviors, it just goes that one step further, and they start to develop unhealthy weight disorders and they start to have weight problems," she continued.
Taylor also says that food has taken on a large psychological role, which is the biggest cause for obesity.
Image Sources:
Comments
May 8, 2013
I totally disagree with this article and the comments of the doctor. I photograph food all the time, when eating out, to share on my Instagram. Additionally, I'm a Paleo food blogger, so I'm photographing food all the time. I think about food even when I go to sleep, since I'm thinking of developing new recipes all the time. However, I have no problem with obesity nor any eating disorder. A lot of my fellow food bloggers and friends are also on Instagram photographing food as well. And none have obesity problems or eating disorders. Obesity is not caused by the amount of food alone, it's caused by the type of food some people eat, such as sugar (refined sugar, fructose, HFCS, etc) and carbohydrate intake and lack of exercise. If one eats right (such as a Paleo or SCD diet), then there's no need for over-eating or being obese. Please get your facts right... before scaring people into a panic. There is plenty of proof on the internet how Paleo/SCD works for people to loose weight, keep it off, and most importantly be healthy physically and mentally.
May 8, 2013
Hi Saffron Girl,
We are merely reporting the results of a particular study as a news story and are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with its findings. Cheers :)