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Scale Pulled From B&M for Promoting 'Triggering' Eating Disorder Message

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A store based in the U.K. has pulled a bathroom scale from its stores after receiving complaints that the message written on it encouraged eating disorder behavior.

The scale reads, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

Attention was drawn to the product after Rachel May Shevlin posted a Facebook status that received more than 5,000 shares. She called the scale and its message, “triggering.”

Would anyone like to join me in writing to b&m to tell them *how lovely to see the phrase I said to my teenage/ young adult self that also led to me calling myself a ‘fat , disgusting waste of oxygen’ often before self harming just because I had dinner, sold in their shops ON FRICKIN SCALES so other impressionable young minds can suffer the same self hatred? *horrible, triggering.” she wrote.

 

Others tweeted to B&M to show their disappointment in the product.

The National Eating Disorder Association cites “cultural pressures that glorify ‘thinness’ or muscularity and place value on obtaining the ‘perfect body”‘ as a factor that contributes to the prevalence of eating disorders. In the the United States, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from clinically significant eating disorders.

A spokesperson from the eating disorder charity Beat, told Mashable, “Manufacturers and retailers should consider very carefully the messages they are conveying by producing and stocking such a product…Young people struggling with an eating disorder are fighting a tough enough battle as it is without thoughtless retailing such as this which can make it even harder. ”

B&M said it would stop selling the scale in its stores, and has been addressing the issue on Twitter:

Originally published: March 30, 2016
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