Eating Disorders are an outward expression of emotional turmoil or deep unhappiness. Sufferers concentrate on food and eating as a way to avoid looking at their problems and to exert control over their own body, when they may otherwise feel powerless in the world.
Although anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are probably the best-known expressions of this condition, there are many kinds of eating disorders, some more extreme than others. Compulsive eating, compulsive dieting, binge eating, comfort eating, laxative abuse, and faddy eating are all forms of eating disorder.
People with eating disorders do not like food; for them it is an addiction. Anorexics regard it as an enemy to be avoided at all costs.