Nutritional treatment of eating disorders

Abstract

Patients with eating disorders have disturbed food intake, food pattern, food behavior, and mistaken beliefs about food and nutrition, which can worsen nutritional status. The nutritional treatment aims to revert such alterations and to promote better food habits and relationship with food. The objectives and characteristics of the treatment are different for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, but usually the approach has two phases: the educational phase, whose major goals are regularization of food habits and increase of nutrition knowledge; and the experimental phase, whose targets are better nutritional rehabilitation and more complex improvements of nutritional behavior. Evidence suggests that nutritional treatment can ameliorate such parameters, but some inadequate food behaviors remain, such as feeling of incompetence while dealing with food. More studies are needed to evaluate the efficacy of the nutritional treatment.