A number of states, including California, Texas, and Colorado, are sponsoring bills to help increase awareness and research into eating disorders. In California, for example, Assembly Bill 10 would require school districts, county education offices, and charter schools to develop and adopt policies and resources about body shaming before the 2025-2026 school year.
In Colorado, a bill to create a state Office of Disordered Eating Prevention is working its way through the legislature. This program is aimed at closing gaps in treatment, offering research grants, and working to educate students, teachers, and parents about eating disorders, including early warning signs of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. Another goal in Colorado is prohibiting the use of body mass index (BMI) by insurers to determine medical necessity for eating disorders treatment. Opponents of using BMI in this way point out that persons who fall outside of BMI guidelines are often denied care or pushed out of treatment programs prematurely.
Other proposals nationwide include prohibiting social media algorithms from promoting products with potentially harmful content, prohibiting sales of weight loss pills to minors, and adding programs on eating disorders prevention to middle school students and high school curriculums. One of the factors credited to the increased interest in designing and starting such programs was the surge in eating disorders reported during the COVID-19 lockdown.
