Voltaire once said: "Nothing would be more tiring than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity." This quote reminds me that as much as food can give us pleasure, we should never forget that we need it to survive. I figured most of us don't do this, but once again I was reminded that there are some people who do. If we looked at the world as a whole, we would realize that out of 100 teenage girls, 1 in 5 suffers from anorexia. As defined by the National Eating Disorders Association, “Anorexia nervosa is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder.” characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss." (NEDA). The term “Anorexia Nervosa” literally means “neurotic loss of appetite,” and could be more generally defined as the result of prolonged self-fasting and an unhealthy relationship with food and self-image. It is characterized by “resistance to maintaining body weight at or above the minimum normal weight for age and height”, “intense fear of gaining weight or of being “fat”, even if underweight”, “disturbances in the experience of weight or of body shape” , undue influence of weight or physical shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the severity of low body weight” and “loss of menstrual cycle in girls and women after puberty”. (NEDA) Among women aged 15 to 24. years, AN has been shown to have 12 times the annual mortality rate of all causes of death, and among premature deaths of anorexic patients, 1 in 5 is caused by suicide, which gives a 20% increase in probability of suicide. (EDV) Considering the historical moment we are living in, it is undeniable that the media plays a crucial role in who we are both as individuals and as a society, and in how we look at the... medium of paper. .....then he or she might even choose to throw up that food. This can be shown and further explained once again by referring to Catherine. The Church, fearing a possible heretic, had men watching over her and ordering her to eat. At first she agreed because if she didn't she would be accused of being a witch (the worst possible crime at the time) and possibly tortured or killed. But he was unable to tolerate the presence of food in his body and purged everything he ate. (Bell) Purging was used as an indirect way to limit food, when "forced" to eat for convenience or to avoid uncomfortable situations. This shows that eating is something under the absolute control of the individual, because whether by restricting food, or when forced to eat, by vomiting that food, the individual is able to control what goes and stays within the his body..