Diagnosing Orthorexia

What’s Eating Our Kids? Fears About ‘Bad’ Foods
By ABBY ELLIN

SODIUM — that’s what worries Greye Dunn. He thinks about calories, too, and whether he’s getting enough vitamins. But it’s the sodium that really scares him.

“Sodium makes your heart beat faster, so it can create something really serious,” said Greye, who is 8 years old and lives in Mays Landing, N.J.

Greye’s mother, Beth Dunn, the president of a multimedia company, is proud of her son’s nutritional awareness and encourages it by serving organic food and helping Greye read labels on cereal boxes and cans.

“He wants to be healthy,” she says.

Dr. Steven Bratman of Denver has come up with a term to describe people obsessed with health food: orthorexia. Orthorexic patients, he says, are fixated on “righteous eating” (the word stems from the Greek word ortho, meaning straight and correct).

“I would tell them, ‘You’re addicted to health food.’ It was my way of having them not take themselves so seriously,” said Dr. Bratman, who published a book on the subject, “Health Food Junkies,” in 2001. Read More

The idea of ‘orthorexia’ seems to be right on. There are a lot of people that seem to fear certain foods because of what they think they know. There’s nothing sensible about a diet where you fear foods to the point that is nearly controls your life. Regardless of any scientific report you will ever read, the best diet will always be on that includes everything in moderation.