ANOREXIA sufferer Jonathan Edwards could have survived only if he had been force fed, an inquest heard.

Mum Lesley Moore told deputy coroner Peter Hatvany that her son’s only hope of survival was to be sectioned and forced to eat by trained eating disorder specialists.

But as Jonathan, of Volta Road, town centre, acknowledged his condition and periodically asked for help, to section and force feed him would have been illegal.

“Towards the end, five days a week, he ate two crackerbreads – and that was the one meal,” said Mrs Moore, who lives in Spain.

“And the other two days he binged and was bulimic.

''He looked shocking and I said to him, ‘What do you think you look like?’ He said, ‘I look fine’.”

Mrs Moore said it was ironic her son struggled so much with food despite being a hard working chef.

But as his pitiful diet continued Jonathan’s strength deteriorated to the point where his boss became so fearful he would collapse at work, she had no choice but to sack him.

“He didn’t have the strength,” said Mrs Moore. “And she was frightened he was going to fall into the cooker or drop a hot pan of boiling water on himself. She did all she could and was very sad to do it but Jonathan could not make it through a shift.”

Jonathan, who had depression, suffered difficulty with eating when he was around 16 years old and by his early 20s he was suffering his first bout of anorexia.

Mrs Moore said her son was upset that he had inherited her small stature while his brothers Simon and Graham were tall and broad. As a result he would work out obsessively sometimes doing 750 push-ups at a time to make him bigger.

He seemed to overcome the condition but in his mid 30s it returned. In the last 18 months of his life Mrs Moore said Jonathan looked “skeletal” and his consultant psychiatrist Dr S Ramesh said he looked “like a concentration camp survivor”.

By September 2007 – five months before his death – his Body Mass Index (BMI) had plummeted to 14.9. A healthy BMI for a man is between 23 and 25.

“Walking up the slightest incline was hard for him,” said Mrs Moore. “He’d stop and put his hands on the top of his legs and his kneecaps were swollen where they were over-compensating because he had no muscle.”

Jonathan was admitted to Great Western Hospital on March 24, 2008 after his brother Graham found him unconscious at the home they shared.

But despite doctors efforts to raise his blood sugar with intravenous taps of dextrose and glucose, his blood-sugar levels would not rise and on March 28 he “rapidly and unexpectedly deteriorated” and died.

Dr Mark Juniper, consultant in respiratory and intensive care at Great Western Hospital, said: “His heart muscle would have been malnourished. His body was unable to cope with the stress of the illness that he had and his heart just wasn’t able to cope.”

Recording his conclusion, Mr Hatvany said: “Jonathan died of chronic malnutrition as a result of anorexia nervosa.

“He suffered from long-term anorexia and had an abnormally low BMI.

“My verdict is going to be one of natural causes aggravated by self-neglect.”