Mahdis Habibinia | Executive Editor, Online
Featured Image: Compulsively portioned-out ingredients and extreme exclusion of certain food groups may be signs of orthorexia. | Courtesy of Jordan Chu, Photo/Video Editor
They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but for those with orthorexia, the compulsive need to have exactly one apple a day may actually lead them astray.
Orthorexia, also referred to as orthorexia nervosa, is an eating disorder defined as the unhealthy obsession with proper or healthy eating — a term coined in 1998 by Dr. Steven Bratman. Orthorexia mainly revolves around food quality, not quantity. So people with orthorexia are not always focused on losing weight.
Being wary of the nutrition you consume, meal prepping, or even counting calories is neither a problem nor what orthorexia encompasses. It’s when people exhibit symptoms of obsessive behaviour in pursuit of a healthy diet that it becomes an issue. They become overly fixated on eating healthy to the point where they are, in fact, damaging their own well-being and mental health.
Dr. Neeru Bakshi, medical director of the Eating Recovery Center in Washington, described what a slippery slope healthy eating may be sometimes.
“Orthorexia often starts out as an innocent attempt to eat more healthfully, but can take a turn to a fixation on food quality and purity,” Bakshi explains. “This then develops into a rigid eating style, which can crowd out other activities, interests, and relationships, and can cause health issues.”
The disorder is not formally recognized by the American Psychiatric Association or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. So a formal diagnostic criteria is not available, which means neither are: estimates on how many people have orthorexia; whether it’s a stand-alone eating disorder, or a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
However, awareness about the disorder is on the rise. A few years ago, orthorexia peaked in awareness when Jordan Younger, a successful blogger and founder of the lifestyle brand The Balanced Blonde, admitted that her obsessive motivation to eat healthy actually made her malnourished.
Signs of orthorexia include: compulsively checking ingredients and nutritional labels; an increase in daily concern and thoughts about the health of ingredients and/or diet; cutting out an increasing number of food groups altogether; an inability to eat anything but a narrow group of foods that are deemed healthy; unusual interest in the health of what others are eating; spending hours per day thinking about what food might be served at upcoming events; showing high levels of distress when healthy foods aren’t available.
One may also refer to the 10-question checklist called the Bratman Test — if you answer “yes” to four or more of the questions, red flags should be going off.
Unfortunately, there is no treatment specific to orthorexia. However, many physicians treat it as an extension of anorexia (an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat) and/or OCD. In this treatment route, patients will usually undergo psychotherapy to increase the variety of foods eaten, exercise control over their diets, and expose themselves to anxiety-provoking foods.
“There’s an extraordinary amount of fear to eat something that is outside of their healthy eating program, whereas a healthy eater is okay with that,” explained founder of Food Coach NYC Dana James.
So if you find yourself constantly and daily prioritizing nutritional value over the pleasures of eating accompanied with an overall decrease in the quality of your life, there is no shame in seeking support regarding your eating behaviours.
After all, “No one plans to develop an eating disorder,” said Younger.
