Restaurant for Anorexics Offers Food for Thought

Dec. 21, 2004 — -- In the heart of Berlin's trendy Tiergarten district, where cozy cafés and sprawling "biergartens" nestle alongside elegant eateries, there's a place for people who dread the very thought of eating. But it's a space that offers the very thing anorexics avoid -- food.

Called Sehnsucht -- German for "longing" -- the brand-new restaurant is aimed at people suffering from eating disorders, and it's proudly billed "the world's first restaurant for anorexics."

But if a dining hall for anorexics sounds like a bit of an oxymoron -- or a chapter from a Victorian advice book on how to force-feed starving, overwrought ladies -- the staff at Sehnsucht will have you know you're wrong.

For one, many members of the staff have at some time suffered from an eating disorder and they understand how serious and debilitating it can be. For another, they say the place is designed to make dining a pleasurable -- and not stressful -- exercise.

"Our owner, Katja Eichbaum, was anorexic for a long time," explained Sehnsucht worker René Kilian in a phone interview with ABCNEWS.com from Berlin. "She thought for a long time about it, she had the idea for a while, and she wanted to help other people with the same problem."

The head chef and several waitresses have also suffered from eating disorders, and they bring the lessons of their illnesses with them to the table.

By all accounts, anorexia is spreading around the world and has been afflicting people -- mostly young women -- in areas where eating disorders had been all but unknown.

In the United States, between .5 percent and 1 percent of American women struggle with anorexia, and between 5 percent and 20 percent of those struggling with anorexia nervosa will die, according to the National Eating Disorders Association.

In Germany, health experts estimate there are about 100,000 anorexics and 600,000 bulimics, an alarming figure experts attribute to the growing incidence of childhood obesity across the country.