Apparently insisting on ‘healthy eating’ could bring you more harm than good. People who are fixated with ‘naked’ or ‘raw’ ingredients and diets which ban processed or refined foodstuffs may be displaying symptoms of a serious eating disorder called ‘orthorexia nervosa’.
The term is derived from the Greek word for ‘correct’, which stands for the fixation on quality and strict internal rules of those suffering from this condition. Individuals with this condition can even exclude entire food groups, which can easily result in lethargy, weight loss and dangerous levels of malnutrition.
The disorder was named by Dr Steven Bratman in a 1997 paper, in which he wrote that sufferers could fall into depression by even accidentally ‘devouring a single raisin’ in violation of internal guidelines. He also wrote: ‘Orthorexia eventually reaches a point where the sufferer spends most of his time planning, purchasing and eating meals.’
Dr Bratman also said that orthorexia was very similar to well-known eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. According to the Daily Mail, food blogs promoting latest fad diets and photo-sharing sites like Instagram – which has around 27,000,000 pictures labelled #eatclean, which mostly depict supposedly healthy dishes or men and women showing off their slim bodies – are being blamed for this condition’s rise.
