This 'Silent Eating Disorder' Isn't About Weight, Body Image

Earlier this year, an 8-year-old girl from Los Angeles named Hannah went viral for the videos she posted online, showing her trying out different foods, documenting her reactions to them, and offering a ranking on a scale of 1 to 10. The clips aren't just frivolous forays into the world of weird foods—they're an exposure therapy of sorts for Hannah, who suffers from a little-known eating disorder called avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID—sometimes called "the silent eating disorder."

• What it is: The disorder, which afflicts between 0.5% and 5% of kids and adults in the general population, is unlike other eating disorders that hyperfocus on negative body image or a desire to lose weight. Instead, patients with this condition have fear or anxiety over consuming the food itself, which limits their food intake and can cause social isolation and long-term health issues such as weight loss, stalled growth, and nutritional deficiencies, per CNN and USA Today. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ARFID was officially added in 2013 as a food or eating disorders diagnosis to the DSM-5, per ABC News.

• Cause: Studies show that ARFID may be tied to other conditions, including general anxiety, depression, autism, and ADHD, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Other patients may have had a traumatic experience with food that triggered the disorder. "The people that have this diagnosis have a fear of food, meaning a fear consuming food, [and] a fear of being around food," therapist Danielle Gordon told Nightline in April. "That can look like a fear of texture, [or] different aversions to smells. It can also present in a form of fear of choking, vomiting, or being allergic to the food."
• Not just being 'picky': People with ARFID often have a very limited list of foods they've deemed acceptable—as few as five or 10 food items, and even those items may get passed over by an anxious ARFID sufferer if they're on the same plate as other, nonacceptable foods.
• What helps: Early intervention, specifically via cognitive behavioral therapy and guided exposure, can inch patients slowly to a better, healthier relationship with food. Five months into her own treatment, Hannah—who started exhibiting signs of ARFID as a baby who refused whole milk, and who has suffered from stunted growth, migraines, and frequent constipation since—now has 11 foods on her "safe" list (up from five). Her mom, Michelle, says the social media posts have helped as well. "It's been amazing for her because she doesn't feel alone, and she realizes that there's so many other people out there like her," she tells USA Today.

(More eating disorder stories.)