World Eating Disorders Action Day: Break the Bias and Support Families

June 2nd 2025 is World Eating Disorders Action Day and this year’s theme is Break the Bias and Support Families (https://www.worldeatingdisordersday.org/). The EDGI2 team is a collaboration across the US, Mexico, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden, using eating disorder genetics research to get on board with this global effort! You can read more about the EDGI2 project from the view of the lead investigator, Dr Cynthia Bulik (read here)

But, how does genetics play into eating disorders? Let’s walk through it!

Our genome contributes in some way to just about every part of who we are. For some things, like eye colour or height, it contributes a lot, while for other things, like whether you make your bed in the morning, it contributes less. Importantly, your genetics also interact with your environment- so not ‘nature vs. nurture’, but ‘nature AND nurture’! This is also true for eating disorders. In fact, genetics contributes quite a bit to eating disorders. 

We first realised genetics played a role in eating disorders by observing how they would occur in families- in fact, the risk of any eating disorders is elevated in direct relatives of someone with an ED. But the genetics of eating disorders is not as straight forward as a single gene inherited from a parent ‘giving’ their child an eating disorder. Not all children who have parents with an eating disorder develop an eating disorder, and even when multiple members of a family do have eating disorders, they are not always all the same type of eating disorder. 

To figure out how this happens, we did some pretty cool science and, with the help of a global team, 16,992 people who had experienced anorexia nervosa, and 55,525 controls, we were able to identify the first eight areas of the genome that contain genes contributing to anorexia nervosa. But, what ARE these genes? And what about eating disorders other than anorexia nervosa? 

That’s where EDGI2 comes in! We realised that while genetics contributes to eating disorders, it’s a bit like a 4000 piece puzzle- lots of pieces across the entire genome that individually don’t make much sense, but together create a complete picture. Just like with the genetics of eating disorders, there are a lot of other factors that can influence whether you finish the puzzle- how tired or stressed you are, whether you have a reference image, whether you’re in a busy or peaceful environment. From our research so far, we know that eating disorders are not a choice, nor are they inevitable. Better understanding how they occur will help us better identify and treat all eating disorders in all people. To do this, we need a lot of people who have experienced an eating disorder representing a whole range of different races/ethnicities, ancestries, body sizes, genders, and eating disorder experiences to understand how genetics and environment contributes to eating disorders across diverse populations. 

Together, we can use eating disorder genetic research to Break the Bias and Support Families for all people affected. 

Find out more about EDGI2 at edgi2.org (United States or Puerto Rico), edgi2.org.au  (Australia),  edgi.nz (New Zealand), edgi.se (Sweden), or if you are in Mexico, at instagram.com/edgimexico or comenzardenuevo.org.