It’s time to make friends with
food again!
With so much information now available about healthy eating and nutritional values, we should be a nation of happy, healthy eaters. But we’re not. Obesity is running alarmingly high and eating disorders abound. Isn’t it time we stopped obsessing about food? Isn’t it time we made friends with food again?
Everything in moderation: we say it all the time. But when it comes to following a balanced diet, for many of us common sense goes out the window. Why are some people dieting themselves to the point of starvation, while others are literally eating themselves to death?
Why are we damaging our physical, and increasingly emotional, wellbeing with this unhealthy preoccupation with food – how much, how little, how good, how bad, how many calories, how many carbs, how much fat, how much salt, how much sugar, how many additives. These are important considerations, but more and more of us are obsessing ourselves into a frenzy about the very fuel we should be enjoying and the various food groups we need to keep our bodies in good working order.
Orthorexia nervosa: are you a victim?
The rapid increase in eating disorders is worrying, as anorexia and bulimia continue to take their toll. The serious conditions these disorders can trigger, from vitamin deficiency to heart failure, are equally alarming.
But there’s another eating disorder that is proving even more sinister because, on the surface, it masks itself behind a seemingly healthy lifestyle. It’s anything but!
It’s called orthorexia nervosa, a term first coined a few years ago by Colorado-based Dr Steven Bratman, who recognized a growing obsession with healthy eating, not only in many of his patients, but in himself as well.
What is orthorexia?
“It’s great to eat healthy food,” Dr. Bratman says on his website, “and most of us could benefit by paying a little more attention to what we eat. However, some people have the opposite problem: they take the concept of healthy eating to such an extreme that it becomes an obsession. I call this state of mind orthorexia nervosa: literally a fixation on righteous eating, a pathological fixation on eating proper food.”
Dr. Bratman’s point is that orthorexia can progress beyond the lifestyle choice of eating healthily. In some cases, he says, an obsession with healthy food can eventually exclude one’s activities and interests, damage relationships, and even become physically dangerous. “When this happens,” he says, “orthorexia takes on the dimensions of a true eating disorder, like anorexia nervosa or bulimia.”
If you are concerned that you or someone you know might be heading towards orthorexia, take a look at Dr. Bratman’s website, www.orthorexia.com, where you can take a simple self-test to evaluate the situation. The doctor has also written a book entitled Health Food Junkies, providing practical advice on how to overcome an obsession with health foods.
So what is an orthorexic?
According to Dr. Bratman, “While an anorexic wants to lose weight, an orthorexic wants to feel pure, healthy and natural.” He relates the tragic story of a woman who suffered from orthorexia, recognized the problem, and who appeared to be on the way to recovery. Yet she died of heart failure brought on by orthorexia-induced starvation. “She wasn’t afraid of being fat. She didn’t want to be thin. She just wanted to eat healthy food.”
An insidious progression
Orthorexia usually begins as a resolution to improve general health. But as we all know, it takes real willpower to adhere to a diet that may differ from our past food habits and the food culture around us. Many orthorexics, Dr. Bratman points out, impose an iron self-discipline on themselves, at the same time demonstrating an attitude of superiority over those who eat junk food, or who eat less healthily.
Over time, this becomes an obsession with ‘pseudospiritual connotations.’ Orthorexics feel almost holy and pure when they eat what they consider to be a healthy diet. But when they slip – we’re all human, after all – they feel guilty and punish themselves with ever stricter diets and fasts. Food becomes the focal point of the orthorexic’s life, and the downward spiral of a decidedly unhealthy obsession with food is set in motion.
Let’s get food back in perspective!
It’s important to adopt a healthier lifestyle, and a balanced diet is an important element of that lifestyle. But the key word here is ‘balanced.’ We need to keep our relationship with food in perspective, and enjoy food for its versatility and taste. How wonderful to sit down to a delicious meal with family and friends! How refreshing to reward ourselves with the occasional treat of a mouth-watering dessert or a piece of chocolate!
It’s all a matter of attitude. When we start to eliminate out entire food groups for whatever misguided reason, or reduce portions more and more, we are starving our bodies of the balance and nutrients they need to keep us in top form.
So let’s stop obsessing about food – and especially in front of our children. Young minds are highly impressionable, so teach your children the delights of a balanced diet. You don’t want your children growing up to be the next orthorexics, anorexics or bulimics.
It’s time to embrace food again, and see it as the friend it is!
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