When Eating Well Turns to Eating Hell

Whilst it is not yet to be found in any diagnostic manual, Dr. Steve Bratman coined it Orthorexia-- meaning 'righteous appetite' -in 1997. These are people who are focussed, but obsessively so, on apparent eating well. They inspect food labels and read obsessively about nutrition. The health of what they eat takes up inordinate amounts of time.

Their social circle may shrink as their eating well health habits become progressively narrower. Friends often become bored with hearing about the nutritional value of food, fasting and ways of cleansing the body. And they're often tired of the moralising and lecturing that sometimes accompanies the eating well attitudes of orthorexics.

Sufferers can't go out with the same freedom they once used to because they aren't able to control the quality of the food they order. Organics are in and pesticides are out. Fats, sugars and processed foods are out. So is eating well a bad thing now? Is it bad to not want to put pesticides and other unhealthy elements into your body?

Of course not, but there is a line where even 'healthy' eating becomes 'unhealthy.' There's a line between wanting to eat well and being obsessed.

How does the eating well dilemma start?

For some it starts as innocent food therapy e.g. no longer having dairy products because of a postnasal drip and then when that works, it may progress to cutting out other foodstuffs.

For others it may start for spiritual reasons and a steady slide leads to progressively more foods being struck off the list as they strive for purity. It can even take on a type of kitchen spirituality.

Orthorexia causes confusion and frustration

For many health professionals it can be confusing: they may be presented with a gaunt person with serious food issues, yet they'll insist they are not striving for thinness - how they look isn't the be-all and end-all to them.

For the Orthorexic it can be frustrating: why does this health professional think they are anorexic, they aren't worried about calories, or about how much they weigh, all they want is to eat well and be healthy. They don't avoid food because it's fattening, they avoid it because it's too fatty! They feel mis-understood: they're only on a mission to make the world a healthier place.

What Anoreixa and Orthorexia have in common

o Both can look emaciated and at their most extreme both can die from starvation.
o They often start their slippery slide and as their attempt to eat well and become more healthy.
o Both Orthorexics and anorexics develop fine black body hair and struggle to keep warm
o For women sufferers their menstrual cycle ceases.
o Both become more and more isolated as their eating well food rules become more stringent
o Both groups feel self-righteous and better than other people who don't eat as well and who in their view are weak-willed.
o Both groups maintain and iron-clad willpower only to break down (usually in secret) and binge on all the very foods they would normally not be caught dead eating followed by enormous guilt and self-disgust.

Although the physical affects of both orthorexia and anorexia look the same, and although they have a lot in common -what lies behind the extreme gauntness differs. Anorexics want to 'be thin', Orthorexics want to 'eat well.'