Orthorexia - An Unhealthy Obsession with Healthy Eating

The New York Times has an interesting article, What's Eating Our Kids? Fears About 'Bad' Foods, which discusses orthorexia, "an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating." (Michael Pollan talked a bit about this in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.) Here's an excerpt from the article:

While scarcely any expert would criticize parents for paying attention to children's diets, many doctors, dietitians and eating disorder specialists worry that some parents are becoming overzealous, even obsessive, in efforts to engender good eating habits in children. With the best of intentions, these parents may be creating an unhealthy aura around food.

"We're seeing a lot of anxiety in these kids," said Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "They go to birthday parties, and if it's not a granola cake they feel like they can't eat it. The culture has led both them and their parents to take the public health messages to an extreme."

Tiffany Rush-Wilson, an eating disorder counselor in Pepper Pike, Ohio, has seen the same thing. "I have lots of children or adolescent clients or young adults who complain about how their parents micromanage their eating based on their own health standards and beliefs," she said. "The kids' eating became very restrictive, and that's how they came to me."

Michael Pollan discussed orthorexia, as well as "nutritionism". The 2 terms refer to related but different ideas.

Orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with healthy food, which tends to mean closely reading labels on packages to make sure that they don't contain the bad stuff and do contain the good stuff.

"Nutritionism" is a focus on the nutrients rather than on the foods. For example, carrots are good for us. Why? Well, perhaps it's because they contain vitamin A, as well as beta-carotene. Great! So let's create a product packed with vitamin A and beta carotene! We'll have a big marketing campaign, with ads in all the major print publications, and....

Or... we could just eat carrots.

Of course, I'm sure that some people will read this and use it as a justification for eating whatever they want. But the point of the article isn't that healthy eating doesn't matter. It's just that maintaining a sense of perspective is important. We shouldn't let a fear of "bad" foods ruin our lives.

Comments

[CED]

For people struggling with Orthorexia their effort to maintain healthy eating habits works to their detriment. Orthorexia, loosely defined as an obsession with the purity of good, is becoming more and more prevalent. As a result, Orthorexics can suffer from the following symptoms malnutrition, fatigue, weakness, osteoporosis, digestive problems etc. The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt describes the diseases and also lists warning signs of Orthorexia. If you would like to read the warning signs or learn more about Orthorexia visit: http://eatingdisorder.org/blog/2009/03/17/orthorexia-too-much-of-a-good-thing/