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The book intrigued me from the very title: Food Matters: Biopsychosocial Perspectives, as half of my patients are adolescents, and anorexia nervosa is a frequent and probably the most challenging pathology in my practice. Unfortunately, the number of youth suffering from anorexia is growing faster than our efficacy in treating them. The incidence of anorexia nervosa drastically increased during COVID-19 related social restrictions, and many of these patients began their analyses and treatments and are continuing them to this day (Herpertz-Dahlmann et al., 2024). A biological factor, a viral infection, caused dramatic social changes. These included social restrictions, isolation, distant learning, and (con)fusion between real and virtual life on the Internet. As a result, vulnerable young persons experienced unfavorable—even pathogenic—psychological changes. Like many other colleagues working with adolescents and eating disorders, I continue to search for explanations and solutions (Leskauskas, 2025). Some of the COVID-related biopsycho-social factors involved in the psychodynamics of young anorexic patients are: increased use of social media resulting in media exaggerated body-focused anxieties, constant advertising of specific diets and physical exercises, and an overflow of intrusive virtually generated unrealistic body image ideals with restricted reality testing due to limited in-person social contacts with peers. In addition, restricted secondary separation/individuation from over-controlling and overanxious parental objects, and limited access to sublimation activities—are just some of the multiple COVID-related bio-psycho-social factors involved in the psychodynamics of today's young anorexic patients.
How did these bio-psycho-social factors become entangled into an unconscious dynamic predisposing it for an eating disorder? How do food matters turn into lethal illness? This book, written by authors from a variety of professional backgrounds and cultures, seem