The Dangers of Healthy Living

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The New York Sun

Never before have we been so obsessed with the quality of our food. We are concerned about whether it contains too much sugar, is too processed, whether it is genetically modified, organic or not. These widespread worries appear to be producing a new eating disorder.


Orthorexia is the expression used by eating disorder specialists to describe an unhealthy fixation with the purity and quality of food. This can lead to such an obsession with healthy eating that sufferers avoid most foods and have their lives seriously disrupted.


Among the many consequences is a severe and dangerous loss of weight, though, more often, an orthorexic’s fussy demand for nothing but “perfect” food leads to social isolation, as the sufferer won’t indulge in the everyday dishes that friends and colleagues eat.


You can get a sense of the new epidemic of milder forms of orthorexia when you try to order a meal with a group in a restaurant. More and more of us specify particular ingredients or the strict removal of others or grill waiters as to exactly how the dishes are prepared and where the ingredients came from.


But beneath the surface of milder orthorexic thinking lurk cases of more hard-line sufferers, who devote great mental energy to their strict dietary rules concerning food purity and spend hours worrying about whether the next meal is going to measure up to their rigid standards.


Dr. Steve Bratman, the Colorado physician who coined the term “orthorexia,” has now drawn attention to one of the first patients diagnosed with the condition, who recently died of heart failure brought on by orthorexia-induced starvation. Kate Finn, who, like many orthorexics, had some connection with the health industry, worked as a yoga instructor and massage therapist in California and had been concerned for many years about balancing the correct proportions of carbohydrates, fats, and protein in her diet. She seemed to move constantly from one “detox” or healthy eating plan to another.


Although it seems that she died, eventually, from being too thin, Dr. Bratman believes that Finn wasn’t afraid of being fat, as in classical anorexia nervosa. The tendency of orthorexics to waste away persuades some eating-disorder specialists that this may not be a genuinely new disorder, merely a form of traditional anorexia nervosa where young women compulsively lose weight because of a pathological fear of fatness. However, the underlying motivation is quite different. While an anorexic wants to lose weight, an orthorexic wants to feel pure, healthy, and natural. Failing to understand this distinction may lead to incorrect treatment.


A study just published by the Institute of Gut Sciences of La Sapienza University in Rome is the first attempt to measure the prevalence of orthorexia in the general population. Researchers found that up to 7% of the Italian population suffers from orthorexia nervosa; intriguingly, it was a misunderstanding of nutrition that seemed to be the most commonly found predisposing factor.


This is a staggeringly high prevalence figure for a brand new disorder that did not appear in the academic medical journals until this year.


It is possible that orthorexia is being fueled by the health-food and alternative-medicine industries, whose advertising and “educational” messages stress the vital importance of getting the recommended daily allowance of vitamins and minerals. This, combined with burgeoning government and official medical warnings about the epidemic of obesity, is perhaps producing an unhealthy hysteria over what we eat.


In the past, orthorexics were probably affectionately referred to as “health-food junkies,” but now doctors are increasingly realizing that an obsession with healthy food can progress to the extent where it crowds out other activities and interests, impairs relationships, and even becomes physically dangerous.


While there might be skepticism among some specialists about whether we need yet another “new” disorder, it is important to remember that the well-established and accepted category of bulimia nervosa – the eating disorder characterized by purging and vomiting to get rid of recently consumed food, in order to avoid weight gain – was first described as recently as 1979.


It doesn’t seem impossible that the current preoccupation with healthy eating could be nudging people toward illness, just as a preoccupation with emulating the looks of a stick-thin model can nudge young women toward bulimia.


After all, when was the last time you ate something without worrying whether it was good for you?


The New York Sun

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