Thread: Orthorexia Is The Latest Eating Disorder Doing The Rounds!

Orthorexia Is The Latest Eating Disorder Doing The Rounds!

Orthorexia, the obsession for healthy food is the new eating disorder on the rise! I could never imagine that healthy eating could also be a disorder! Orthorexia Nervosa is a term coined by Steven Bratman, a Colorado based MD, about 12 years ago when he noticed pathological trends in the preference for health foods. Till date this neurotic obsession for healthy eating is not categorized formally as a mental disorder in the mental disorder bible DSM-IV, but now many nutritional psychologists are compelled to categorize it as a distinctive mental disease due to its damaging affect on the human body.

When you are an orthorexic, you’re extra conscious of eating the purest food available. You want to eat only what according to you is ‘good’ food. You’re scared of even occasionally binging on a piece of rich creamy black forest cake because you heard that they’re not good for health. You’ll be happy eating boiled vegetables all the while. You’ll be so choosy about food that you might not want to go out for dinner with your family to a decent restaurant out of an irrational fear of getting contaminated dishes to eat! You’re most likely to shun all synthetic food in fear of their being cultivated using pesticides and fertilizers. You’re most likely to go organic completely. But let me tell you my friend even organic food is not 100 % healthy these days!

This is what Ursula Philpot, chairperson, mental health, British Dietetic Association has to say about the malady "The issues underlying orthorexia are often the same as anorexia and the two conditions can overlap but orthorexia is very definitely a distinct disorder". "Those most susceptible are middle-class, well-educated people who read about food scares in the papers, research them on the internet, and have the time and money to source what they believe to be purer alternatives."

If you’re not eating sugar, salt, soya, alcohol, dairy foods, corn, yeast, wheat etc, then what are you eating? Orthorexia leaves people under-nourished. Not only that. With such a lot of rigidity you’re going to be a victim of clinical depression which is a major psychological epidemic of the present times, for sure.

Who is to blame for this rise in Orthorexia I ask? Is it society? Is it media? I think both! We associate beauty with ultra slim bodies and stress consumption of health foods only for great shapes. We are so obsessed with slimness that anything else is ridiculed. Also the media hype for health foods is no less by television commercials, newspaper advertisements, roadside banners, internet blogs, social networking circles….I can go on and on! We are scared to death for eating anything other than health foods by the ‘uber savvy medicals’- dieticians, doctors, health professionals (you find in every nook and corner of your city)!

Good health and a great shape are not about health foods but about healthy eating. There’s a difference between the two. I don’t eat a lot of health foods but am fit as a fiddle and am in great shape too! I really don’t care about the health overheads of eating sugar, salt, caffeine or that chocolate cake I was talking about. Only thing that I know is healthy fooding is about a balanced diet and exercise. Orthorexia - What have I got to do with it?

News source : Guardian

I can see where it would get to a point that would be unhealthy. But that's just stupid.