Numerous studies report on factors that may explain the inclination to diet. Some of these studies focus on the impact of mass media, family and friends. For instance, media convey salient or hidden messages to girls about what they should look like (Andersen & DiDomenico, 1992; Waller & Shaw, 1994). This points to the negative impact of an increasingly aggressive media culture, viewing children as consumers. Moreover, the strong correspondence between dietary restraint of 10-year-old girls and their mothers' dieting behaviour (Hill et al., 1990) becomes important because 60—80% of mothers may be on a diet (Edlund, 1997; Maloney et al., 1989). Also, almost 60% of girls aged 14 years reported that they had a friend who used to diet, and four times more girls than boys may have a friend who would like them more if they were thinner (Edlund, 1997). The question then, is how primary prevention can address and counteract negative external influences from poor human role models as well as from dysfunctional advertising. On the other hand, social influence, whether it comes from significant others or from mass media, needs a `receptor'. Hence, other studies explaining the inclination to diet focus on psychological factors like body dissatisfaction, interoceptive awareness, concurrent psychological stress, poor selfesteem, and the vicious circle between dieting, poor self-esteem, and general distress (Hsu, 1990; Polivy & Herman, 1993; Rosenvinge, 1994; Rosenvinge et al., 1999; Striegel-Moore et al., 1986). The question then, is how to conduct primary prevention in a manner that diminishes these kind of psychological factors.

A social-cognitive model (Fairburn & Wilson, 1993) may offer a framework bridging the dichotomies. Hence, sociocultural messages of thinness as the key to success, popularity and the resolving of psychological problems may be introjected and incorporated in the cognitive-affective schemata of individuals who are vulnerable because they are looking for solutions to personal problems. Such a model also predicts that watching other people dieting becomes a model learning effect only if the behaviour is viewed as attractive and performed by significant others. Thus, cognitive schemata and negative model learning may be important targets for primary prevention.

Normal developmental transitions are a risk period for developing eating problems and eating disorders. For boys, physical maturation brings them closer to the masculine ideal, but it takes the girls further away. Thus, boys gain weight due to an increase of muscle-andskeleton mass, while girls gain weight due to an increase in body fat. For girls, particularly among those who mature earlier or later than their peers (Killen et al., 1992, 1994), physical changes may elicit body dissatisfaction and an inclination to lose weight. Furthermore, normal development may imply psychological changes in roles and responsibilities, and those who cope with such challenges in a more dysfunctional way may come to believe that to resolve problems is to improve on their appearance by reducing the size of the body by losing weight (Smolak & Levine, 1996; Striegel-Moore, 1993). Hence, information about normal physical changes in order to prepare adolescents for developmental challenges may be another important arena for primary prevention. . .

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