Cafeteria Minefield?

Some think of college as a crucial time with regard to eating disorders. It's not hard to imagine the freedom of living away from home leading to changed eating habits. For those who are maintaining their diets without parents for the first time, it's common to gain some weight in the adjustment. And for some, that weight gain can cause anxiety that in turn triggers experimentation with binging and purging or restricting food.

Complicating this is that icon of educational institutions, the cafeteria. For some, the cafeteria is a fishbowl: It seems that everyone is watching what they eat and what they don't eat. This increases the sense of pressure and fees perfectionism. And if there were friends or relatives back at home who knew about the eating disorder, college is a new environment in which the eating disorder can go back undercover.

• Sending a student with an eating disorder off to college
• Lighting the eating disorder fuse
• "Marcia Brady," favorite teen of the 70s, battled bulimia