Gay men are more likely than heterosexual men to have an eating disorder, while lesbians are just as likely as straight women to have them, according to new research conducted at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and published in the April issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Ours is the first study to use diagnoses based on clinical criteria, says lead author Matthew B. Feldman. Past studies have used feelings of body image and other less exact measures.

Co-author, Ilan H. Meyer, says this is important because public health policy is based upon clinical criteria that documents actual disorders. This type of research is more difficult and expensive to conduct and, until now, was completely lacking. Without such a baseline characterization of the problem within the gay community there can be no federal funding for research and treatment of eating disorders.

The study itself conducted exhaustive interviews of 388 white, black and Latino LGB men and women for diagnoses of clinical and subclinical anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders, and compared them against 126 white heterosexuals of both genders.

It found that 15 percent of gay or bisexual men had at some time experienced at least some of the symptoms of an eating disorder – three times what was seen in the heterosexual men.

In contrast, there was little difference between the women, regardless of their sexual orientation. Just less than 10 percent have ever experienced those symptoms.

Meyer was skeptical of earlier reports that showed higher rates of eating disorders among gay men. He anticipated that his study would debunk those findings.

“I was surprised by the very strong relationship between sexual orientation and eating disorders in gay men,” Meyer said.

“We also looked at different ways that men are connected with the gay community and found that participation in a recreational gay group was associated with having a current eating disorder,” Feldman said.

Other forms of participation in the community appear to be neutral or even slightly protective of not having an eating disorder. Meyer said the importance of the data is that it does not support the notion that participation in community groups places one at increased risk for eating disorders.

Feldman warned that these associations were not strong, and association is not the same as causation.

One theory has been that because lesbians do not seek the approval of men, they would have lower incidence of eating disorders than heterosexual women. Earlier research had been mixed in terms of supporting or disproving this theory.

“What our study shows is that there is no difference between lesbians and heterosexual women. Lesbians are not protected from having eating disorders,” Meyer said.

Feldman added: “Women, regardless of their sexual orientation, are born into a society that objectifies them; there is no immunity from that. If you are a woman, you are aware that you are objectified in the society.”

The study also found that eating disorders were just as common among blacks and Latinos as whites. The historic stereotype has been that eating disorders mainly affect white, middle-class women. But that seems to have been more the result of access to health care and shoddy research. More recent studies have found no differences between racial or ethnic groups in the occurrence of eating disorders.

Feldman is hoping to carry out research as to how gay men and lesbians respond to specific interventions for eating disorders, and if it is any different from their heterosexual counterparts.