Does the Biggest Loser promote eating disorders?

October 12, 2010 8:09 PM

Has there been any research done on how programs like The Biggest Loser contribute to eating disorders (in the contestants or viewers)?

Sometimes I watch the Biggest Loser and wonder if the contestants starve themselves or try to purge before weigh-ins. Also, it's painful to watch a contestant get upset when they "only" lose six or seven pounds. Any thoughts on the psychological effects of using the scale as the ultimate god of judgment in a competition where weight defines the whole person?

posted by prairiecatherine to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

Best answer: This three part interview with finalist Kai Hibbard contains a lot of pretty graphic information about starvation, feeling forced to work through injuries, and other unhealthy practices promoted or condoned by the show's producers. It's some pretty sick stuff, and she claims that it's pervasive.
posted by decathecting at 8:14 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I was about to link to the same interview (it was linked through this site, which has a lot of other interesting stuff in the same vein). I wonder if the "pop" weigh-ins they're doing this season is sort of in response to the dangerous prepping mentioned in the article, since now they can't prepare.
posted by phunniemee at 8:27 PM on October 12, 2010

Tons of studies on makeover shows (I did google scholar eating disorder reality television' post-2002.) One by a faculty member in my department (Nabi, 2009.)

Studies and publishing take awhile. I'm not sure if that show has been around long enough to hit the journals.
posted by k8t at 8:29 PM on October 12, 2010

Here's an article about a similar Canadian show. Page 32 sums up research that's been done about The Biggest Loser. You can buy the full article about that research.

Here's an opinion piece on The Biggest Loser published in a journal called Obesity Management expressing concern about the effect the show will have on viewers (without citing any research). Obesity Management later published this research, but that site shows only the first page.

An article called The Biggest Loser: The Discursive Constitution of Fatness says the show is

a highly politicised space that educates subjects, disciplines the non-compliant; part of a moral economy that differentiates between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens. We read TBL as a powerful public pedagogy that circulates techniques for a government of the self; a component in the neo-liberal reinvention of ‘welfare’ that promotes choice, personal accountability and self-empowerment as ethics of citizenship while, at the same time, masking social forces that position people into the dejected borderlands of consumer capitalism. Contributing to the ‘biopedagogies’ of weight, TBL classifies the obese, overweight and physically unfit as personal moral failures, immoral and irresponsible citizens, socially, morally, and economically pathologised outsiders.

posted by John Cohen at 8:32 PM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

FWIW, an anecdotal rather than scholarly observation: my workplace has a "Biggest Loser" contest every year. At the most recent one I saw some downright frightening behavior, mostly involving women who were already no larger than a size 2, going on crazy unhealthy diets (one of which involved a tiny little muffin as a meal replacement), subsisting on lettuce and water, skipping meals before weigh-ins, and so forth. I'd venture a guess that when there is a lot more at stake than an office contest, this behavior would become even more extreme.
posted by chez shoes at 8:49 PM on October 12, 2010

Anecdotally, around the time The Biggest Loser premiered, my eating habits and self-image were pretty unhealthy ("disordered eating" if not a full-blown eating disorder). I found the show very triggering. The healthy side of me found the show disturbing, because the deprivation and humiliation tactics they used on the contestants seemed so much like eating-disorder mentality. The disordered side of me was drawn to the show, and wanted to keep watching and use it as motivation.

I have read somewhere - if I can, I'll find where, probably in a book about eating disorders published at some point in the last decade - that it's believed just going through the motions of an extreme diet can lead to an eating disorder. Going without adequate nutrition for a while can seriously mess with your head. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment might interest you; though the participants didn't have weight loss as their goal as in The Biggest Loser, during the deprivation period they started feeling overweight and became preoccupied with food.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:30 AM on October 13, 2010 [1 favorite]