What Is Orthorexia?

I trace the origin and legitimacy of a disorder that purports to describe an “unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.”

Orthorexia nervosa is described as “a fixation on the virtue of food or an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating”. Orthorexia has been described as a type of “self-righteous eating” or “as ‘clean eating’ by those who are involved in these behaviors.” Wait. Let’s take a step back. First, although this phenomenon “has been described in the scientific literature, it is not formally recognized as an official psychiatric diagnosis.” Also, orthorexia doesn’t even have an accepted definition or validated diagnostic criteria, and if you can’t validly diagnose or even define it, what good is it? Where did this concept come from? come of? As I discuss in my video Is orthorexia a real eating disorder?did not come from an academic source, but from a popular press article called “Confessions of a Health Food Addict” in a magazine called yoga journal.

Come on explore its “scientific legitimacy”. Clearly, it seems that orthorexics obsessively avoid processed foods, unhealthy fats, and foods with too much salt or too much sugar. But for definition, we must avoid unhealthy fats, they are not healthy! And anything that has too much salt or sugar has too much salt or sugar. Is a non-smoker who “obsessively” avoids cigarettes an orthopedic?spiritexotic? Someone obsessed with “correct” breathing? “In many cases, parents strictly limit their children’s sugar intake or try to feed them only organic foods.” The horror! To the institution they go to!

Orthorexics “make the nutritional value of [a] food more important than the pleasure of eating it. If you didn’t do that just a little, wouldn’t you eat donuts all day? If pleasure trumps health, should we start shooting heroin? Absurd.

One of the proposed criteria is an “unusual concern for one’s own health.” What does that mean? Are you mentally ill if you decide to hold back the bacon on your double cheeseburger? That could look like a unusual level of concern in a standard American diet.

“People with orthorexia pay excessive attention to the quality of food consumed; they also prefer not to eat unhealthy foods.” I bet they wear their seat belts too! The “experts” recommend that we reprogram your unhealthy healthy thoughts with cognitive behavioral therapy combined, of course, with medications, perhaps SSRIs, such as Zoloft, Prozac, and Paxil.

With respect to psychotropic medication, SSRIs can aid, but you may also need to dip into atypical antipsychotics. Often there may be a trade-off, such as: “Of course, from a public health and clinical perspective, it would not be reasonable to suggest that people who follow a strict healthy diet are endangering their health.” It only reaches “’clinical significance’… when health-directed eating” begins to cause problems in relationships or impairs an individual’s social life. But, if someone asks their spouse not to smoke around them and the children, such “health-oriented” behavior could cause “interpersonal distress” in the relationship. Should you keep quiet then? Or should you keep smoking so you don’t create waves with your smoking spouse? And when it comes to social life, are you mentally ill if you tell your date you’d rather not go to the steakhouse or cigar lounge?

“The problem… is when the behavior starts to prevent a person’s ability to participate in everyday society…They can start bringing their own food to…dinners.” Maybe I’ve been to too many potlucks, but bringing a healthy plate to share with others doesn’t suit me. It seems like a psychiatric crime susceptible to drugs.

Then there is Instagram. Think about “the implications that social media can have about psychological well-being…[of] hundreds of thousands of people.” Did you know that “healthy food posts tend to receive more support from users than less healthy images, indicating a positive attitude towards healthy food and healthy eating”? Soon the whole world could be taking photos of broccoli. Quick, take off your straitjackets!

In his decades of medical practice, Dr. Dean Ornish says he has never seen a case of “orthorexia”. “Most people,” she says, “have the opposite problem; They don’t care enough what they eat.”