What is Orthorexia?
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.
Anorexia disguised as health
Orthorexia is, in many ways, a form of anorexia disguised as health. The obsession is not with thinness but with purity: knowing the exact origin of foods, their quality, how the oil was pressed, what is in every dish. The person can often no longer eat in a restaurant or let anyone cook for them, because they need to control every ingredient and every quantity. The restriction and the control are the same as in anorexia; they are simply camouflaged behind virtue, wellbeing, and the refusal to put a poor-quality product into the body. Beneath the language of health is a restrictive mind orchestrating and monitoring everything that comes in.
It is the same mechanism as in the other eating disorders: everything to do with food, and nothing to do with food.
Frequently asked questions
Is orthorexia an eating disorder? Yes. It works as a form of anorexia centred on purity rather than thinness: the restriction and control are the same, camouflaged behind the language of health.
How do you recognise orthorexia? Intense anxiety in the face of a food judged impure, an inability to eat in restaurants or let others cook, a need to know the origin and quality of every food, and a sense of moral superiority tied to food choices.
On orthorexia and body-image disorders in men, see Men Who Heal, Dr Jacquet’s practice dedicated to men’s eating disorders.