An obsession with size zero could be forcing people into extreme diets followed by periods of bingeing on junk, an expert warned.
Studies have suggested that starvation followed by enjoyment of highly palatable foods like burgers or chocolate could alter the way the brain reacts to food, she said.
Professor Janet Treasure warned the fashion industry's obsession with thinness not only puts models at high risk of developing eating disorders, but has an adverse impact on the general public.
She said: "There's a tendency to break the diet when you see these highly palatable foods. That sets it up so you get into a cycle of intermittent naughtiness. It gets you into a momentum - hooked on that sort of cycle."
Prof Treasure, who works in the eating disorders research unit at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said the pattern was known as "binge priming".
In an editorial published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, she said studies on animals, involving high sugar or high fat foods or a combination of the two, informed how humans also reacted.
"Animal models explain how environmental changes might produce eating disorders," she said. "For example, if after a period of food restriction, animals are intermittently exposed to highly palatable food, they will significantly overeat.
"This pattern continues when their weight is restored. This tendency to overconsume or "binge" when exposed to highly palatable foods remains several months after the period of binge priming.
"Translating into the human situation, we would predict that binge priming caused by irregular dieting and/or extreme food restriction, interspersed with intermittent consumption of snacks and other highly palatable food, might lead to permanent changes in the reward system."
Binge priming in adolescence, when the developing brain is more susceptible to rewards, could lead to persistent eating problems, Prof Treasure said. People exposed to binge priming may also be more prone to substance misuse.