Dieting and body image in the child's world: Conceptualization and behavior

The authors examined children's (N = 431, aged 7 years to 10 years 9 months ) understanding of and reasons for dieting, to validate recent research ind icating that perceived body-image dissatisfaction and restrictive eating be haviors occur in preadolescent populations. Scores on 2 sentence-completion tasks confirmed that the children do have a clear understanding of what di eting means in terms of intent and behavior (defined, in this study, as int entional restrictive eating behaviors). The results indicated that children as young as 7 years of age report dissatisfaction with their current body size and deliberately engage in restrictive eating behaviors. These finding s provide validation of previous research and emphasize children's capacity to engage in deleterious health behaviors. Given that extreme dieting beha viors are harmful to a child's physical and psychological well-being, the a uthors concluded that research exploring (a) the genesis of these attitudes and behaviors and (b) their continuity or discontinuity across childhood i s required.