Good Diets Gone Bad

Words by Katherine Castillo Eustaquio

A friend of mine has always been the poster child for everything healthy. She doesn’t smoke. She doesn’t drink but sometimes treats herself to an occasional glass of red wine. She goes to the gym regularly and she watches what she eats, no, make that glares at what she eats. She reads the labels and counts calories way too religiously, condemns pre-packed foods quite loudly, and sticks up her nose to just about everything with fats and preservatives. She has become a pain in the ass to eat with.

My friends and I have always envied her slim figure because she seems to have been born without any body fat. However, her obsessive-compulsive eating habits have become of enormous concern and annoyance as of late. While the rest of us were eating reasonable portions of pizza, she’s picking on her plate of greens that has been modified to suit her fancy—no mayonnaise, no cheese, and oh, are these greens organic?

At first, I thought she had anorexia, an eating disorder where one has an intense fear of gaining weight and therefore results in an alarmingly low body weight. But when we asked her, she told us that she’s not obsessed about gaining, losing, or maintaining her weight, rather, she’s obsessed about eating healthy. My friend is suffering from a different kind of eating disorder called orthorexia.

Coming from the Greek words orthos meaning “correct” and orexis meaning “appetite,” orthorexia literally means “correct appetite.” In 1997, Steven Bratman, a medical doctor from Colorado, coined the term “orthorexia” or “orthorexia nervosa” to describe an eating disorder where one develops an unhealthy obsession to eating healthy foods alone and nothing else. People with orthorexia shun away from those with preservatives, trans fat, too much sugar or salt, and artificial ingredients to extreme levels that can result in malnutrition and even death.

Orthorexics, bulimics, and anorexics are all concerned about the food they consume; however, it is important to note that the three eating disorders are entirely different in intention. Anorexics and bulimics are fixated on the quantity of food and in weight loss while orthorexics are obsessed with the quality of food and the assurance that they are consuming pure goods. Anorexics are usually in a state of denial that they are unhealthy while orthorexics are on the hunt for everything healthy. They are also wary of the way the food are being prepared and cooked.

Orthorexic people get depressed when they consume food that didn’t pass their standards. In certain cases, their anxieties shoot up to extremes that they refuse to eat food prepared by their own families and stop eating with friends who pick on their obsessive-compulsive habits.

An orthorexic is the perfectionist kind—tidy, anxious, and protective— with an intense need to control everything, especially the food they eat. According to surveys, orthorexic affects both sexes but majority of orthorexics are middle-aged, middle class and well-educated women. Male athletes, particularly the body builders, are also prone to orthorexia.

The scary part is that this pathological disorder can go unnoticed. “There is a fine line between people who think they are taking care of themselves by manipulating their diet and those who have orthorexia,” says Deanne Jade, the founder of the National Centre of Eating Disorders in the U.K. “I see people around me who have no idea they have this disorder.”

The sudden rise in the number of orthorexics can be blamed on the modern society’s take on dieting—ranging from diets that completely eliminate certain food types like fats and carbohydrates to performance-based diet regimen written by fitness trainers. Another factor could be the widespread health scare in the preservations used in fast foods.

Orthorexia should be treated as seriously as you would treat a heart ailment. The first step is to determine if you have the disorder or you’re just being plain O.C. Here’s a screening test developed by Dr. Steven Bratman that can help determine if a person is orthorexic.

If you answered “yes” to four or more questions, it’s high time you give some food issues a rest. If you answered “yes” to all ten questions, maybe it’s time to seek medical advice regarding your food obsession.