Orthorexia nervosa is an eating-like disorder characterized by an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy food.
Orthorexia as an unhealthy fixation with what the individual considers to be healthy eating.
Beliefs about what constitutes healthy eating commonly originate in one or another dietary theory such as raw foodism or macrobiotics, but are then taken to extremes, leading to disordered eating patterns and psychological and/or physical impairment.
Some people’s dietary restrictions intended to promote health may paradoxically lead to unhealthy consequences, such as social isolation, anxiety, loss of ability to eat in a natural, intuitive manner, reduced interest in the full range of other healthy human activities, and, in rare cases, severe malnutrition or even death.
People with orthorexia nervosa re concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly pure.
Orthorexia nervosa differs from other eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, where those affected focus on the quantity of food eaten.
Orthorexia nervosa also differs from anorexia nervosa in that it does not disproportionally affect one gender.
There is a significant positive correlations between orthorexia nervosa and both narcissism and perfectionism, but no significant correlation between orthorexia nervosa and self esteem.
The intense orthorexia nervosa individuals likely take pride over their healthy eating habits over others and that is the driving force behind their orthorexia as opposed to body image like anorexia.
Orthorexia nervosa is not recognized as an eating disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and so is not mentioned as an official diagnosis in the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Symptoms include obsessive focus on food choice, planning, purchase, preparation, and consumption; food regarded primarily as source of health rather than pleasure
It manifests as distress or disgust when in proximity to prohibited foods; exaggerated faith that inclusion or elimination of particular kinds of food can prevent or cure disease or affect daily well-being.
There are periodic shifts in dietary beliefs while other processes persist.
They maintain moral judgment of others based on dietary choices; body image distortion around sense of physical impurities rather than weight.
There are persistent beliefs that dietary practices are health-promoting despite evidence of malnutrition.
Generally, eating disorders are influenced by a variety of factors including: biological, psychological, and sociocultural influences.
These factors include hormone levels, neurotransmitters, and even genetic components.
Additionally, researchers have found strong correlations between orthorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Orthorexic tendencies typically occur in individuals with lower self-esteem.
Excessive dieting may also reflect patterns of perfectionism and the need for control.
These same tendencies also act as ways to cope with difficult emotions or traumatic experiences.
Some associations exist between orthorexia nervosa and substance abuse.
Similar to anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, orthorexia nervosa typically also stems from social pressures, distorted body image, and desires to be thin.
Obsessive focus on “healthy” eating, as defined by a dietary theory or set of beliefs whose specific details may vary; marked by exaggerated emotional distress in relationship to food choices perceived as unhealthy; weight loss may ensue, but this is conceptualized as an aspect of ideal health rather than as the primary goal.
Compulsive behavior and/or mental preoccupation regarding affirmative and restrictive dietary practices believed by the individual to promote optimum health. (Footnotes to this criterion add:
Dietary practices may include use of concentrated food supplements.
Exercise performance and/or fit body image may be regarded as an aspect or indicator of health.
Violation of self-imposed dietary rules causes exaggerated fear of disease, sense of personal impurity and/or negative physical sensations, accompanied by anxiety and shame.
Dietary restrictions escalate over time, and may come to include elimination of entire food groups and involve progressively more frequent and/or severe partial fasts regarded as purifying or detoxifying.
This process commonly leads to weight loss, but the desire to lose weight is absent, hidden or subordinated to ideation about healthy food.
The compulsive behavior and mental preoccupation becomes clinically impairing by any of the following:
Malnutrition, severe weight loss or other medical complications from restricted diet.
Intrapersonal distress or impairment of social, academic or vocational functioning secondary to beliefs or behaviors about healthy diet
Positive body image, self-worth, identity and/or satisfaction excessively dependent on compliance with self-defined healthy eating behavior.
The most nutritionally-informed, are a potential high-risk group for eating disorders, due to a substantial accumulation of knowledge on food and its relationship to health; the idea being that the more one knows about health, the more likely an unhealthy fixation about being healthy can develop.
The participants also answered questionnaires to provide insight into their eating behaviours and attitudes, and despite this study finding that nutrition and health-science students tend to have more restrictive eating behaviours, these studies however found no evidence to support that these students have “more disturbed or disordered eating patterns than other students”.
The more understanding of food one has is not necessarily a risk factor for ON, suggesting dietetics professionals are not at significant risk of it.
Young adults and adolescents are extremely susceptible to developing eating disorders.
Eventually food choices may become so restrictive, in both variety and calories, that health suffers.
Orthorexic behaviors can often lead to malnutrition and weight loss, and it is often associated with anorexia nervosa.
Studies have also shown that obsessive-compulsive tendencies are linked to the development of orthorexia, and some researchers suggest that orthorexia should be diagnosed as OCD because it is driven by an obsession for attaining a perfect diet.