Orthorexia: The Obsession of Eating Pure

Eating disorders have raised recently among people effecting the psychological and physiological state. Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa have been among the earliest eating disorders raised in the past. Nowadays, Orthorexia, a new emerging disorder, has become recently.

Orthorexia is an unhealthy fixation on eating only healthy or pure food. It has been defined as an eating disorder in the 90's, but expert believe it get its steam recently due to the raise of profusion of foods marketed as healthy and organic, and by the media's often conflicting dietary advice. Similar to Anorexia nervosa it based on food restriction. It just differs from Anorexia that Orthorexics focus on the quality of the food they eat instead of the quantity. Orthorexia starts out with pure intention of wanting to be healthy, but it is taken to an extreme. Their food should be certified organic or a whole food. A whole-grain bread which is very healthy, high fiber food is avoided because it has been processed in some way. Orthorexics do not usually fear being obese like anorexics would, but the progressive nature of developing the disorder is very alike. They may eliminate entire groups of food such dairy and grains, later eliminating another group of food, and another, all for the purpose of reaching a clean, pure, healthy diet. Consequently, they reach a state where they become malnourished due to elimination of critical nutrients from their diet.

Having a meal with a family can be challenging. They would usually think of that food is impure, or not clean because someone else has prepared it for them. As result, they end up with experiencing lot of anxiety and discomfort.

The road to the recovery may same long, and some people experience overlapping during their treatment, but it is possible to recover with a combination of good treatment provided by a psychologist therapist and a dietitian. People with eating disorder tend to be very expert in food and food science, but they do not usually have the accurate information.