NEDA TOOLKIT for Educators
Impact of eating disorders on cognitive ability and
functioning in school
Eating disorders can profoundly affect a child’s ability
to learn. Understanding some of the ways an eating
disorder can affect cognitive function may help
educators to recognize that a student may be at risk for
an eating disorder. Listed below are key ways that an
eating disorder can affect a child’s cognitive functioning
because of poor nutrition. A child’s cognitive function
will also be affected by the mental disorders that often
coexist with an eating disorder, which may include
anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
A review of the research on the impact of under-nutrition
found that unhealthy dietary patterns:
• Can have detrimental effects on cognitive
development in children
• Has a negative impact on student behavior and
school performance
• Makes students feel irritable, may cause
nausea, headache, and makes students feel
fatigued and have lack of energy
• Individuals who are actively dieting have a
reduced ability to concentrate and focus, and
do less well at listening to and processing
information • Negatively affects students’ task performance
• Leads to deficiencies in specific nutrients, such
as iron, which has an immediate effect on
students’ memory and ability to concentrate
• Causes people to focus on the details at the
expense of the big picture, which may affect a
student’s ability to synthesize information and
understand broader concepts
• Increases perfectionism and obsession with
good grades
• Can increase anxiety and depression, which
further amplifies the negative effects of
unhealthy dietary patterns
• Can make students become less active and
more apathetic, withdrawn, and engaged in
fewer social interactions
• Can impair the immune system and make
students more vulnerable to illnesses
• Increased absenteeism in affected students
because of the above impairments
Despite malnourishment, the perfectionist attitude
of those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia may
compel them to maintain a high level of academic
performance. Thus a student with a life-threatening
eating disorder may continue to earn all A’s, despite
being acutely ill. For individuals with eating disorders,
functioning can be asymmetrical; some areas, such as
schoolwork, may be less affected, while others, such
as health and social functioning, are affected greatly.
Academic performance is not a good measure of an
eating disorder’s severity.
In addition to the effects described above,
preoccupation with food often dominates the life of
a student with an eating disorder. According to Dan
W. Reiff and Kathleen Kim Lampson Reiff in Eating
Disorders: Nutrition Therapy in the Recovery Process,
individuals with eating disorders self-report an
overwhelming preoccupation with food:
“In our clinical practice we surveyed over 1,000
people with clinically diagnosed eating disorders.
We found that people with anorexia nervosa
report 90 to 100 percent of their waking time is
spent thinking about food, weight and hunger; an
additional amount of time is spent dreaming of
food or having sleep disturbed by hunger. People
with bulimia nervosa report spending about 70 to
90 percent of their total conscious time thinking
about food and weight-related issues. In addition,
people with disordered eating may spend about
20 to 65 percent of their waking hours thinking
about food. By comparison, women with normal
eating habits will probably spend about 10 to
15 percent of waking time thinking about food,
weight, and hunger.”
Page | 15