Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper explores historical evidence of restrictive eating, as well as binging and purging in the ancient world from 3100 BC to around 476 AD in order to draw comparisons with contemporary restrictive and binge eating disorders — namely, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It aims to analyze the causes of disordered eating over time with regard to societal norms and attitudes, examining the ways in which these disorders diverge between the ancient and modern worlds. Principally, this paper asserts that differences in the significance of body image on a societal level account for distinctions in the motivations of disordered eating within the ancient and modern worlds. There are, however, key parallels to behaviors that women exhibit with regard to disordered eating that can be attributed to the continuity of patriarchal structures between these two time periods.