Obsession With Pure Foods Also Eating Disorder

What do you call an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating? Mental-health professionals are calling it orthorexia nervosa, a term that means “fixation on righteous eating,” and it’s afflicting more people than ever. "I am definitely seeing significantly more orthorexics than just a few years ago," said Ursula Philpot, chairwoman of the British Dietetic Association's mental-health group, who went on to describe those suffering from orthorexia as “solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure.'” And what foods aren’t considered “pure”? The Observer identifies sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soy, corn and dairy as “just the start of their diet restrictions,” which can include anything processed, anything raised with hormones or pesticides, and anything artificial. "There is a fine line between people who think they are taking care of themselves by manipulating their diet and those who have orthorexia,” said Deanne Jade, founder of the National Centre for Eating Disorders. “I see people around me who have no idea they have this disorder.”