A New Eating Disorder?

I spend time on this website talking about ways to up the nutrition quotient in our lives.  I just read about a newly noted phenomenon that sounds an unexpected alarm.

Steven Bratman, MD, author of “Health Food Junkies – Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating” has coined this unoffically diagnostic term – Orthorexia – to describe a pattern of debilitatingly disordered eating where healthy eating habits spiral out of control and become an obsession to eat only healthy foods.  Orthorexia can develop when a person hears strong negative messages about a food type or food group and then entirely eliminates it from their diet causing serious consequences to their health.

It’s a fascinating article and certainly promotes the notion of balance and “legalizing” all foods.  To read more, go to http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/060109p40.shtml.