Though it's not officially recognized as an eating disorder, orthorexia involves the same obsession thinking and behavior patterns as other eating disorders. Orthorexia is an obsession with "healthy or righteous eating" and often involves highly restrictive eating habits in the name of "eating healthy".

"As with anorexia, many people with orthorexia can become pathologically fixated with food, although in this case, it is with eating 'proper food'. The insidious part is that it is all done in the guise of health…As it is with some of the officially recognized eating disorders, this type of approach to nutrition begins to take over, and you find yourself spending inordinate amounts of your mental energy, time and, in many cases, resources to meet the needs and expectations of the approach."

One of the dangers of orthorexia is that a person's diet can become so restricted that, in the name of "being healthy", the restricted diet becomes unhealthy and potentially dangerous. Read more at StateNews.com.

Labels: causes of eating disorders, mental_health, orthorexia

Those who treat eating disorders are finding a new one called "orthorexia." Dr. Michael Bratman, who named the disorder, says it is a "fixation on righteous eating."

The typical anorexia nervosa patient starves herself to appear thin, but the orthorexic restricts her food for spiritual fulfillment. Orthorexics often develop such rigid rules about food choices that they end up starving themselves. Because they restrict themselves to only a few foods they believe are "pure" enough to eat, they usually cannot eat out or shop at ordinary grocery stores. Their quality of life decreases as their food obsessions increase.

Some studies have found a link between vegetarianism and eating disorders. In a 1997 Michigan study of 107 teenaged girls, vegetarians were found to vomit four times as often, use laxatives eight times more often, and diet twice as often as meat eaters. A July 2006 study in Israel found that 85% of anorexic patients were vegetarians.

Labels: dieting, orthorexia, vegetarians