Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Orthorexia: An Unhealthy Focus On Eating In A Healthy Way

Eve Davies

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Content warning: this article contains discussion of disordered eating, particularly orthorexia.  

This week (28th February- 6th March) is Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Eating disorders are a range psychological conditions that cause unhealthy eating habits. They are devastating mental illnesses that affect 1 in 50 people in the UK, yet they are widely misunderstood in the media and wider society.

The complexity of eating disorders is often mistaken as there are many different types of them, including Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, Rumination Disorder, and Orthorexia. People with eating disorders can be looked upon as admirably healthy (in the case of orthorexia) or disgustingly greedy (in the case of BED), and neither of these are correct assumptions. An eating disorder is not a personality trait; it is a mental disorder.

Here I will explore orthorexia as I believe that it is an eating disorder that most often goes unrecognised.

What is Orthorexia?

The term ‘orthorexia’ was coined in 1997 by Dr. Steven Bratman and means an obsession with proper or ‘healthful’ eating. Orthorexia is essentially when healthy eating becomes an obsession, which has a detrimental impact on one’s well-being. Like anorexia, orthorexia involves restriction of food, but the focus is more on what food is eaten rather than the amount of food. Suffers are usually praised for their ‘healthy’ diet rather than offered the support they need.

Symptoms

Studies have shown that people suffering with orthorexia also show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Orthorexia is not currently recognised in a clinical setting, so people are yet to be officially diagnosed with it. However, common symptoms include:

• Compulsive checking of ingredient lists and nutritional labels.
• Cutting out an increasing number of food items and food groups all together.
• An inability to eat anything but a sparse group of foods that are deemed ‘healthy’ or ‘pure’.
• Unusual interest in what others are eating. This usually involves comparison of diets and an inability to comprehend how people can eat so freely.
• Spending an excessive amount of time thinking about what food might be served at upcoming events, worrying about a lack of control over the food one might consume, and constantly thinking about the next meal.
• Feeling distressed when ‘safe’ or ‘healthy’ foods aren’t available, perhaps when away from home and pushed out of a normal routine.
• Obsessive following of food and ‘healthy lifestyle’ profiles on social media.

People suffering with orthorexia usually categorise foods as ‘healthy’, therefore ‘allowed’, or ‘unhealthy’, therefore ‘off limits’. Foods that are ‘of limits’ can be described as a person’s fear food, meaning they are afraid to eat it due to negative thoughts about its nutritional content. This categorisation is personal and will differ between sufferers. An individual’s beliefs about what is healthy often leads to them cutting out whole food groups (usually fats, sugars, or carbohydrates). Eventually, they will become deficient of essential nutrients, meaning that, while they believe they are being ‘super healthy’, they are actually under nourishing themselves.

Tackling Orthorexia

Promotion of ‘healthy’ recipes and diets can be difficult for sufferers to deal with. The greatest step towards tackling orthorexia would be filtering the language used around food. In society, foods are constantly labelled as ‘healthy’ and ‘good for you’ or ‘unhealthy’ and ‘bad for you’ and this is ultimately where orthorexia begins.

In the words of the world’s fast-growing online PT, James Smith:

“Don’t see foods as “good” or “bad”.

Some are nutritious, some are not.

Some are high in calories, some are not.

Some are satiating and keep you full, some do not.

Some food choices make sense on a fat loss diet, others don’t.

There is no such thing as a “bad carb”.”

So, next time you find yourself thinking ‘I wish I could be as healthy as them’, remember that that person might be struggling beneath the surface, worrying about every crumb of food that touches their lips. It is not healthy; it is far from it. It is an obsession, certainly not something one should aspire towards. It is a mental trap, a compulsive, consuming mindset, that demands courage and brevity to get out of.\

Need further support? BEAT is the UK’s leading eating disorder charity. Their website is packed with resources and information to help anyone suffering with an eating disorder.

Featured image courtesy of Louis Hansel on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.