Experts say we are so obsessed with healthy eating these days that we are endangering our lives and that we have never been more afraid of our food!
For some specialists, the problem is a modern eating disorder called orthorexia nervosa.
Someone suffering from orthorexia is “imprisoned by a range of rules which they impose on themselves,” says Patrick Denoux, a professor in intercultural psychology at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures.
These very strict self-enforced laws isolate the individual from social food gatherings and in extreme cases, can also endanger health.
Paris nutritionist Sophie Ortega said she had one patient who was going blind due to deficiency of vitamin B12, which is needed to make red-blood cells.
B12 is not made by the body and most people get what they need from animal-derived foods such as eggs, dairy products, meat or fish or from supplements.
The term orthorexia nervosa was put together in the 1990s by San Francisco-based alternative medicine practitioner Steven Bratman,
Orthorexia is when enthusiasm becomes a pathological obsession, which leads to social isolation, psychological disturbance and even physical harm.
In other words, it’s “a disease disguised as a virtue.”
The term is trending in Western societies, prompting some experts to wonder whether it is being fanned by “cyber-chondria” – self-diagnosis on the Internet.
Orthorexia is not part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, set down by mental health professionals in the US that is also widely used as a benchmark elsewhere.
As with other phobias, the problem may be tackled by cognitive behavioural therapy – talking about incorrect or excessive beliefs, dealing with anxiety-provoking situations and using relaxation techniques and other methods to tackle anxiety.
Apparently between two and three per cent of the French population suffer from orthorexia.
Outside the world of clinicians, orthorexia seems to be creeping into wider usage.
Over nearly three decades, Europe has experienced a string of food safety scandals – beginning with mad-cow disease and continuing recently with insecticide-contaminated eggs – as well as mounting opposition to the use of antibiotics, genetically modified foods and corporate farming practices.
The latest advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) on processed meats might well be scientific, but it is feeding a national obsession with health that is already bordering on the unhealthy.
The desire to eat clean, green, raw and organic has seized the lives of many in the world!
Of course, it is wise to be careful about what we eat. But are some of us bordering on the insane?
As some nutritionists say – what starts as a healthy flirtation with kale juice can quickly spiral into something life-sappingly perfectionist!
But there are signs that the modern wheat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free obsessiveness is taking a toll on people’s mental health.
Bratman says it is not eating healthy food that is the disease, but the vice-like grip of the mind on the idea of only eating healthy food, which becomes an obsession.