Food Addiciton and Anorexia

This blog is dedicated to exploring food addictions and the affect these addictions have on people. One thing that has interested me is whether or not these addictive behaviors we are experiencing through out our society are a new phenomenon or if they have always been a part of our surroundings. I think a lot of addictive behavior has been with humans for a long time.
Take alcohol for example. The fall of the Roman Empire has been attributed to excessive wine drinking. Although it must be added that lead was being added to the wine for flavor at the time that insanity seemed to make a big impact in the government. Lead is a very hazardous material for your brain. But there was definitely a large drinking problem at this time.
During the revolutionary war it was common to drink on the job. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography talked about his time in the printing room and how at the mid morning break his fellow workers would go next door to fill up their mugs with beer. They would then drink alcohol the rest of the day. Needless to say, he claimed productivity decreased dramatically in the afternoon hours.
So alcohol and we can assume alcohol addiction has been with us for centuries but what about other eating disorders? If you view pictures from several centuries ago the people generally seem to be plump. You must remember that the average person never had a portrait painted of them so we are only seeing how the very upper crust lived. The average person at this time was much shorter than today do to poor nutrition. This leads us to believe that food addiction did not show up because there was generally not enough food to overeat. Even though the disorder may have been present there was no way to feed it so to speak.
I am currently amazed at the number of people who are trying to create an eating disorder in themselves. There is a large number of young females and males who are trying to become anorexic. They are even searching for how to become anorexic websites to find anorexia tips. They think this is an easy way to lose some pounds.
This is very frightening to me in the sense that these people are willing to force themselves to have an eating disorder in order to manipulate how their bodies look. I think this comes directly from the advertising that is bombarding us every day. On one hand we are told over and over how eating this food or eating in that restaurant will make us happy. At the same time slim, sometimes underweight, models are used to portray this fun. So we are told if we eat a lot we will be happy and at the same time we have to be extremely thin to be happy. These two ideas are contradictory. Is it any wonder we are overeating and then using anorexic tips to try to keep our body weight down?
In order to fight these food addictions and eating disorders we must look at the messages of advertisers.