Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Too Thin, Too Young

Aired August 03, 2001 - 09:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LINDA STOUFFER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, from pint-sized pop stars like Christina Aguilera to super thin super models, images in the media are shaping the way young girls actually view their own bodies. And some experts on eating disorders say kids are going to extreme measures to try to live the motto that thin is in and experts now say children as young as 5 years old, if you can believe, are starting to diet.

An online poll conducted by Harris Interactive asked children about their body image and 17 percent of girls age eight and nine perceive themselves as overweight. The figure jumped to 34 percent for girls 10 to 12. And for boys in the same age group, the figures were 16 and 20 percent.

Well, Dr. Ira Sacker deals with the issue of kids, body image and dieting in his book. It's called "Dying To Be Thin." And he's also specialized in eating disorders for more than 25 years now.

Dr. Sacker was kind enough to join us this morning from New York along with one of his patients, 9-year-old Justine Gallagher and her mother Yvonne Gallagher. Thank you all so much for being with us today.

Dr. Sacker, I want to talk to you, if I can, first, just really about the problem. I mean it's hard to believe that girls as young as five are dieting. And it's not as if these 5-year-olds are flipping through "Glamour" magazine or watching MTV all that much. So how are these young kids getting these images in their head?

DR. IRA SACKER, AUTHOR, "DYING TO BE THIN": Well, you know, I think that we as parents, too, unfortunately are teachers by example and I think we have to be careful of the images which we are giving. I think unfortunately the media now is looking at sizes like zero to two as normal so that youngsters are kind of looking at these images and thinking gee, that's how I really want to be.

Our program, which is HEED, we have a national program called Helping To End Eating Disorders, has really been concentrating on really taking a look at why this incredible epidemic, which now is kind of over 13 million individuals, as young as five, and Justine here, who I've been working with for a while, has really gone through it, too. She really understands it.

STOUFFER: And you're saying this is getting worse and starting younger, is that right? SACKER: It's getting worse, it's starting younger and the problem is that oftentimes it's not treated early enough. Parents want to deny that it's really going on initially because nobody wants to really see that oh my god, my child has an eating disorder or has anorexia. And I think the longer we allow this, OK, to really occur without really responding and beginning at a younger age, we're seeing individuals in kindergarten who are like coming in with containers and walking up to their teacher and saying, you know, this has got six grams of fat. I'm not going to eat this. And we're already preoccupied with how our body image looks.

STOUFFER: Well, how can you tell, if you are a mother or father and you suspect that maybe there's a problem but you really don't want to admit it, what should you look for?

SACKER: Well, you can look for a number of things. Number one is the child initially will begin to restrict or will, or after every meal will kind of run into the bathroom, oftentimes to really vomit, and we have youngsters as young as 6 years old who are sticking two fingers down their throat and making themselves vomit.

They may start to isolate. The grades in school may start to really go down. If this is an adolescent female, she may lose her period. Irritability and mood swings begin to occur also.

So there's a number of things that you can really recognize as this illness begins to start.

STOUFFER: And doctor, I know you've been able to help the young girl that's with you today and I want to talk to you, Yvonne Gallagher, the mother of this child. Your child was actually in kindergarten when you first started seeing a problem, and as I understand it, she was eating paper. Now, how did you realize that this was a serious thing she was dealing with?

YVONNE GALLAGHER, JUSTINE'S MOTHER: Well, not right away did I realize. I noticed at home that she would once in a while put paper in her mouth, tissues, things like that. Her kindergarten teacher pointed out, she said how wonderful Justine was doing in school. There was only one slight problem that she wanted to bring to my attention. She will go to the bathroom after washing her hands and bring paper towel back and shred it during the day and eat the paper.

And she was at that time starting to get a little on the thin side and I brought it up to her pediatrician, who nixed the idea of any problem being there. And we just went forward. And little by little certain things, she would restrict her food intake. Things that she loved before she would little by little give those up and just eat very, very small amounts of food and more and more non- nutritional things.

STOUFFER: And Yvonne, what do you think really brought it on for your daughter, because you have an older daughter, too, who's a teenager who, by all accounts, is pretty healthy. So what do you think went wrong with your younger girl? Y. GALLAGHER: I don't know if anything went wrong. I think she is a very sensitive child and she saw pictures of herself as a baby and she was a very healthy, big baby and she saw that image and I guess the image that she wanted for herself was a thin person, a thin child.

STOUFFER: Well, let me ask you, Justine, thanks for being with us today. And I'm hoping to ask you, why do you think this became such a big issue for you? Why'd you start eating paper and being so concerned about your weight?

JUSTINE GALLAGHER, EATING DISORDER PATIENT: Well, I was concerned about my weight because I thought a lot of kids would probably make a lot of -- would make fun of me because I was too chubby or something like that. And I don't know why I started eating paper, but I'm pretty sure that I started eating paper because then if I ate paper I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't eat my dinner and then I wouldn't get, I wouldn't get heavy.

STOUFFER: And Justine, how do you feel about yourself and your body right now?

J. GALLAGHER: Well, I'm happy that I'm thin, but I'm going to try to eat a little more.

STOUFFER: OK. Good. What do you think has helped you? What have people said to you that's really helped?

J. GALLAGHER: Well, I think Dr. Sacker has helped me the most because I went to his doctor's office a lot of times and one day he weighed me. It was a few days after I was sick. And I had, and I had lost weight because when I'm usually sick I usually don't eat a lot of food.

STOUFFER: Well, Justine, I think you look great and I'm so glad to hear that you're more healthy.

But Dr. Sacker, what should parents do? Is it really important to see a specialist and not just go to a general pediatrician for this?

SACKER: Unfortunately I think a lot of general physicians really don't know a lot about eating disorders and often make the mistake of kind of telling parents that their child is going to grow out of it.

One of the other things that we're trying to really do in HEED, in Helping To End Eating Disorders, is to develop the first transitional home for the recovery of eating disorders and this is not existing in the New York area or, for that matter, in a good part of the United States. Justine would have been a great candidate for that kind of residential treatment center.

One of the things we worked out with Justine was we had an, as part of our treatment, an equestrian therapy program in which she learned how to ride horseback and felt that she didn't have to think so much about herself anymore, but now she could think about, you know, taking care of a horse and riding a horse. And that became a very effective model which we want to incorporate into HEED house once that's built.

STOUFFER: And I should say that the good news here is that it is treatable. But if left untreated, these kind of eating disorders can cause problems to everything from a child's teeth to their liver, the heart and skin.

SACKER: Really.

STOUFFER: And Yvonne, I want to ask you another question. If you were to talk to other parents, what would you say? What advice would you give to mothers and fathers of other little girls who might have a problem?

Y. GALLAGHER: I think the most important thing I would say is to not even bring up diet and body image, just to eat healthy and to let your child be who they are and just make sure they eat healthy. Not so much their size or whether they're bigger or smaller, as long as they're eating healthy, that's the main thing.

STOUFFER: There's a difference between being healthy and being thin.

Y. GALLAGHER: Justine Gallagher, thank you very much for sharing your stories. Dr. Ira Sacker, thanks for filling in us on a very serious issue. We appreciate your time today.

SACKER: Thank you so much.

Y. GALLAGHER: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com