Earlier this year, an 8-year-old girl from Los Angeles named Hannah went viral for the videos she posted online, showing her trying out different foods, documenting her reactions to them, and offering a ranking on a scale of 1 to 10. The clips aren't just frivolous forays into the world of weird foods—they're an exposure therapy of sorts for Hannah, who suffers from a little-known eating disorder called avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID—sometimes called "the silent eating disorder."
- What it is: The disorder, which afflicts between 0.5% and 5% of kids and adults in the general population, is unlike other eating disorders that hyperfocus on negative body image or a desire to lose weight. Instead, patients with this condition have fear or anxiety over consuming the food itself, which limits their food intake and can cause social isolation and long-term health issues such as weight loss, stalled growth, and nutritional deficiencies, per CNN and USA Today. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ARFID was officially added in 2013 as a food or eating disorders diagnosis to the DSM-5, per ABC News.