In India, what you eat is all about religion and family, not body image like we see in the West.
March 23, 2026
Original Paper
The Network Landscape of Non-Clinical Eating Behaviors in India
medRxiv · 10.64898/2026.03.19.26348826
The Takeaway
For decades, clinical models have assumed that concerns about body weight and shape are the primary drivers of eating habits and disorders. This study of over 1,500 people in India found that these concerns are actually peripheral, with social structures like religion and family acting as the real centers of behavior, suggesting that our global psychological theories are fundamentally biased.
From the abstract
Eating behaviors and their associated cognitions exist along a biopsychosocial continuum, yet their structural organization remains largely unmapped in non-Western contexts. Adopting a dimensional network perspective, this study characterizes the architecture of non-clinical eating behaviors in India, a region defined by a unique interplay of cultural, structural, and psychological influences. We utilized Mixed Graphical Models (MGMs) to estimate a weighted network of 35 variables from a geograp