Healthy eating varies by individual preference, often based on a variety of factors including a desire to lose weight, to manage a health condition or to engage in more sustainable, earth friendly practices. While shunning high sugar, heavily processed foods is an essential way of life for many, there are those who feel that a healthy eating lifestyle has the potential to turn into an obsession that can become life-threatening. (1)
Orthorexia, a word coined by Steven Bratman, MD, is a term used to indicate a “fixation on eating proper food” in which some people focus so strongly on a pure eating lifestyle that any kind of upset in their eating pattern can spiral out of control. In his article, “Health Food Eating Disorder,” which popularized the term orthorexia in the 90s, Bratman explains that the problems set in when people’s “‘kitchen spirituality’ begins to override other sources of meaning. An orthorexic will be plunged into gloom by eating a hot dog…. Conversely, he can redeem any disappointment by extra efforts at dietary purity.”(2)
The desire to eat healthy can go too far
While Bratman is not advocating junk food over fruits and vegetables, he’s drawing on both his experiences as a physician who practices alternative medicine and the fact the he was once a cook and organic farmer at a large upstate New York commune. Continue reading
In an attempt to curb the mass rush for food change and reform, psychiatry has green lighted a public relations push to spread awareness about their new buzzword “orthorexia nervosa,” defined as “a pathological obsession for biologically pure and healthy nutrition.” In other words, experts are moving toward saying that our demand for nutrient-dense, healthful food is a mental disorder that must be treated.