Hospital admissions for eating disorders have risen by over 120% in the past decade. Waiting times for treatment now average more than three years. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition, yet eating disorders remain absent from the NHS Long Term Plan and national prevention frameworks.

We are facing not one epidemic, but two: obesity is consistently described as “the epidemic of our time”, while the parallel epidemic of eating disorders continues to go unrecognised and unaddressed.

Billions are being pledged to tackle obesity through “junk food” restrictions, weight-loss campaigns, and the rollout of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. While the ambition to improve population health is understandable, this rhetoric risks reinforcing stigma, promoting harmful and rigid ideals of health, and compounding risks for those vulnerable to disordered eating and compulsive exercise.

Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, and leading clinical experts have warned that GLP-1 medications can be dangerous for those with, or at risk of, eating disorders. Expanding access without parallel mental and physical health safeguards risks intensifying the very crisis we are trying to solve. Weight-centric health policy too often overlooks the unintended harms of obesity interventions, as well as the psychological distress that underpins eating disorders. For young people in particular, binary food messaging and body-focused campaigns fuel shame, embed disordered routines and beliefs, and delay help-seeking. Within today’s pervasive diet- and fitness-driven culture - amplified by social media - behaviours associated with eating disorders are not only normalised but often reinforced or even praised. This makes eating disorders harder to detect, more resistant to treatment, and more costly for the NHS in the long run. Beyond the statistics, the greatest cost of all is to individuals, to families, and to lives that are at stake.

The same level of enthusiasm currently being directed toward rapid pharmaceutical solutions must also be channelled into prevention, early intervention, and psychologically informed models of health. Without this, we risk exacerbating the mental health crisis, increasing hospital admissions, and undermining the very aims of the NHS Long Term Plan.

Our Call to Policymakers

We cannot treat obesity and eating disorders in isolation. To address one while ignoring the other is not only short-sighted, but dangerous.

We urge the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, alongside other UK health policymakers, to:

• Recognise eating disorders as a parallel health crisis alongside obesity.
• Embed eating disorder-informed principles into the NHS Long Term Plan.
• Prioritise prevention and early intervention, particularly in community settings where vulnerable groups are most at risk.
• Ensure robust regulation of weight-loss products, including their accessibility and promotion.
  
  

Join Us

By signing this petition, you join the call to ensure eating disorders are no longer sidelined in UK health policy. Eating disorders deserve equal recognition, equal urgency, and equal funding.

ED Informed (@edinformed) is an initiative dedicated to embedding eating disorder-informed approaches into health, education, and fitness policy. We are advocating for practical solutions - such as safeguarding measures in gyms and fitness spaces - and are working with Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, to develop specialist training for fitness professionals. This will help ensure staff have the knowledge and confidence to spot early warning signs and signpost to support.

Our goal is to see this work embedded within national health strategy. But first, policymakers must acknowledge the scale of the crisis.