Abstract
The emotion of disgust - either as a propensity or as a heightened sensitivity - accompanies a number of psychiatric disorders. In mental anorexia, important concomitant emotions are: anxiety, shame and disgust.
As the CNS structures mature and develop, there is a shift from a visual-gustatory perception to a sensual perception. One of the possible explanations for why it is in an overwhelming majority of cases girls who are diagnosed with mental anorexia might be the fact that during the teen years boys are less prone to an inner conflict between the visual and the sensual.
Event so, from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, according to Rozin and Fallon, the emotion of disgust plays an important biological-adaptive role by protecting humans from eating foods which might be poisonous, inedible or germ-infected.