Italian authorities are mounting a $1.5 million US campaign against a growing epidemic of anorexia and other eating disorders in a country known for its fashion industry and image consciousness.

The Italian Ministries of Health and Sports are aiming the project at schools and the media, providing guidelines for magazines, television, radio and Internet sites to discourage ultra-thin beauty ideals.

"Anorexia and bulimia have been for many years diseases that have not been recognized as such. It was sort of a veil of unspoken and unrecognized problems," said Giovanna Melandri, minister for young people and sports.

"So what we really needed to do was to take away the veil to make sure young people, young girls and young boys, know that they can die," she told AP Television News.

Millions of young Italians affected

The project, which begins next month, will also provide training for dance instructors and coaches of such sports as gymnastics and swimming. And it will include a website to encourage teens to discuss healthy eating habits and to counter websites where anorexics share tips on starving themselves.

Melandri cited statistics indicating that such eating disorders affect about two million to three million Italians and that 10 per cent are men. The Association for Pediatric Medicine recently reported that nearly 65 per cent of girls between 10 and 16 want to be thinner than they are.

"This does not mean they are sick, but it means that there is a very reduced acceptance of one's own beauty, one's own very personal and special way of being," Melandri said.

Italy's rates of anorexia are no worse than those of other Western countries, said Dr. Camillo Loriedo, who treats anorexics at the Center for Eating Disorders at Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital.

But he said there was more sensitivity to the issue here because of what he called the Italian sense of family. "Italian families tend to pay more attention to food and the problems of their adolescent children," he said.

In 2006, the government and fashion industry created a voluntary code of conduct requiring models to show medical proof they do not suffer from eating disorders. The code bans models younger than 16 from the catwalks and calls for a commitment to add larger sizes to fashion collections.