What is Orthorexia?
In a culture saturated with clean eating, the person with orthorexia is often admired. Their discipline is praised. Their choices are seen as aspirational.
Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by an obsessive focus on the purity or quality of food rather than its quantity. The restriction is just as absolute as anorexia — but because it is dressed in the language of health, it is rarely named as a disorder.
Why orthorexia is difficult to identify
In a culture saturated with clean eating, the person with orthorexia is often admired. Their discipline is praised. Their choices are seen as aspirational.
What distinguishes healthy eating from orthorexia
The distinction is not the content of the diet but the relationship to it. Healthy attention to food is flexible and proportionate. Orthorexia is rigid, all-consuming, and anxiety-driven.
Signs to look for: extreme anxiety when “impure” food is unavoidable; social withdrawal to control food situations; the restriction expanding over time; a sense of moral superiority related to food choices.
The same engine
Like all eating disorders, orthorexia is a mechanism for managing anxiety and avoiding feeling. The focus on purity creates the same narrowing effect as restriction in anorexia.
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.