Advice on net causing eating disorders
The deluge of nutritional and health advice on the internet and in the media could be fuelling a dangerous but as yet unrecognised eating disorder called orthorexia. Orthorexia nervosa, a term coined in 1997 by Dr Steven Bratman, is a fixation with healthy eating, to the point where it becomes a crippling compulsion, described as “a disease disguised as a virtue“.
It differs from eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia in that the goal is not usually to become thin. In fact, ironically, sufferers are initially motivated by a desire to be well, and to consume pure, “clean“ foods, often to recover from illness.
One of the problems with orthorexia is that in some ways it is more socially acceptable than other disorders.
Instagram has 26 mil lion posts with the #eatclean hashtag (with the implication that anything outside of this is dirty), and food diary apps allow you to micromanage your food intake with no lower calorie limit.The condition is easy to dismiss as the ultimate “first-world problem“, and it is not yet classified by the industry standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
