Copyright © Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. C URRENT O PINION Cultural trends and eating disorders Kathleen M. Pike a,b , Hans W. Hoek b,c,d , and Patricia E. Dunne e Purpose of review Culture has long been recognized as significant to the cause and expression of eating disorders. We reviewed the recent literature about recent trends in the occurrence of eating disorders in different cultures. Recent findings While historically, eating disorders were conceptualized as primarily afflicting Caucasian adolescent or young adult women within high-income, industrialized Western Europe and North America, eating disorders are increasingly documented in diverse countries and cultures worldwide. This study highlights recent trends that reflect the changing landscape of culture and eating disorders: stabilization of the incidence of anorexia nervosa and possibly lower incidence rates of bulimia nervosa in Caucasian North American and Northern European groups; increasing rates of eating disorders in Asia; increasing rates of eating disorders in the Arab region; and increasing rates of binge eating and bulimia nervosa in Hispanic and Black American minority groups in North America. Summary The changing face of eating disorders calls for a new conceptualization of culture in both the emergence and spread of eating disorders across the globe. Keywords anorexia nervosa, Asia, binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, culture, eating disorders, ethnicity, Middle East, sociocultural transition INTRODUCTION Culture has consistently been recognized as an essential and significant factor in the cause, course and outcome of eating disorders. Indeed, eating disorders were initially envisaged as idioms of dis- tress shaped by the unique cultural milieu in which they emerged [1]. When eating disorders were first described in Western Europe and North America, they were thought to be ‘culture-bound syndromes’ that were the result of particular features of these specific cultures. The emergence of eating disorders within the context of Western Europe and North America, and their presumed absence in non-West- ern cultures, contributed to the formulation that certain facets and characteristics of the ‘Western’ culture must be uniquely responsible for the devel- opment and rise of these psychopathologies. Accordingly then, when eating disorders began to emerge in certain non-Western countries, their appearance was taken as evidence of this new society’s adoption and endorsement of Western values, practices, and ideals that were thought to be associated with eating disorder onset. In short, the ‘Westernization’ thesis was grounded in the assumption that increasing exposure to and inter- action with the West – and thus, ‘Western culture’ – resulted in the transmission of eating disorders to non-Western populations. In this study, we highlight trends that have been documented within the past few years regarding eating disorders across cultures. First, we review recent epidemiological findings on anorexia nerv- osa and bulimia nervosa in Western Europe and North America. Then we highlight a growing body of data on the emergence and increase in eating disorders among certain other cultures globally. The emerging data highlight cultural trends related to eating disorders in Asia and the Arab region, as well as among Latina and Black American groups within North America – groups in which eating disorders a Department of Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, b Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Colum- bia University, New York, USA, c Parnassia Psychiatric Institute, The Hague, d Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands and e Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA Correspondence to Kathleen M. Pike, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Unit 9, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10032, USA. Tel: +1 646 774 5308; e-mail: kmp2@columbia.edu Curr Opin Psychiatry 2014, 27:436–442 DOI:10.1097/YCO.0000000000000100 www.co-psychiatry.com Volume 27  Number 6  November 2014 REVIEW