Sick of healthy eating?
By Carl Munson
A Totnesian friend of mine, having heard a radio phone-in that posed the question: “Can healthy eating make you ill?”, told me he didn’t get through, but was ready to say: “most definitely YES! I live in Totnes and I know”.
Totnes is surely - when it comes to healthy living and foody fads - the “been there, done that and spilt organic, free-range, raw gravy down my T-shirt” - the world capital of “worried wellness”.
But it’s not a joking matter. OK, well it’s only partly a joking matter, because a ten-year old idea - orthorexia nervosa - has resurfaced in the midst of the healthy living revolution that we are all being pushed into.
Look around and you’ll see there’s no escape. Supermarkets have harnessed the sales potential of organic and healthier produce, the government and NHS are urging us to eat more wisely to ease the public purse, kids in school have been programmed with the 5-a-day mantra and of course my living - like the livelihoods of most holistic practitioners and pundits - is based on healthy living and eating concepts.
I have to say I can’t blame you if you are sick of it.
That said, you’re probably not as sick as some of the aforementioned Totnes folk and those who may actually be dealing with orthorexia nervosa, because they really are sick; that is if you concur with the founder of this condition, one Dr. Steven Bratman.
Bratman, a Colorado-based physician came up with the term in 1997 to denote what he considers to be an eating disorder characterized by a "fixation" on eating healthful food. From the Greek orthos, meaning"correct or right" and orexis for "appetite", this doctor describes orthorexia as “an unhealthy obsession with what the sufferer considers to be healthy eating. The subject may avoid certain foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, or animal products.”
Though not officially recognised as a condition it seems in psychiatric circles and criticised, in the early days, by those who feel that focusing on healthy eating is generally beneficial and does not indicate a mental imbalance, it must surely now demand greater examination.
“Twenty years ago I was a wholehearted, impassioned advocate of healing through food. Today, as a physician who practices alternative medicine, I still almost always recommend dietary improvement to my patients. How could I not?“ wrote Bratman, nearly ten years ago in the October 1997 issue of Yoga Journal.” A low-fat, semi vegetarian diet helps prevent nearly all major illnesses, and more focused dietary interventions can dramatically improve specific health problems. But I'm no longer the true believer in nutritional medicine I used to be.”
“Where once I was enthusiastically evangelical, I've grown cautious. I can no longer console myself with the hope that one day a universal theory of eating will be discovered that can match people with the diets right for them. And I no longer have faith that dietary therapy is a uniformly wholesome intervention. I have come to regard it as I do drug therapy: as a useful treatment with serious potential side-effects,” he added.
“Many of the most unbalanced people I have ever met are those who have devoted themselves to healthy eating. In fact, I believe some of them have actually contracted a novel eating disorder for which I have coined the name "orthorexia nervosa."
Saying “diet is an ambiguous and powerful tool, too complex and emotionally charged to be prescribed lightly, yet too powerful to be ignored,” Bratman makes a powerful point. Food is powerful medicine. But more powerful and seriously disease-forming are obsession, anxiety and guilt - that evil three headed trio - which sadly lurks in the slipstream of any advice and guidance we are given about healthy eating and living.
I say run any such information past your own instincts, intuition and intelligence. Trust yourself and your body; do your best. And don’t beat yourself up. But above all, get and have a life!
Carl writes for a living; give him some work today - email: carl@carlmunson.com
This article was posted by Carl Munson
