Orthorexia -- Another Sign of Research Proposal

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"I don't think the symptoms are significantly different enough from bulimia or anorexia that it deserves a special diagnostic category...It's an obsessive-compulsive problem. The object of the obsession is less relevant than the fact that they are engaging in obsessive behavior," said one such therapist with a shrug (Ellin 2009, p.1). She said that culture had little to do with the psychological problem and that healthy eating was seen by the patient as merely a way to lose weight, or an obsession fixated on a different aspect of food, beyond its caloric content.

It is true that many orthorexic patients, young and old, lose weight, and sometimes extreme amounts of weight. However, not all patients are fixated primarily on weight loss, or on the fat or caloric content of foods. The youth of the patients, and the fact that boys and girls manifest the illness in more equal numbers also suggests that orthorexia and anorexia might not be synonymous, even if there may be a great deal of overlap between the two disorder. What does seem clear, from analyzing the lives of patients who are anorexic and bulimic, is that there is a strong tendency for such patients to come from homes where aggressively healthy eating is promoted as part of the family culture.

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Merely because a patient does not have a full-blown eating disorder does not mean he or she does not deserve help with achieving a more positive approach to food and eating. Often, the entire family can benefit from taking a more relaxed attitude towards food. The early treatment of children with anxiety-related conditions due to concerns about healthy eating may be one way to forestall the development of more serious and debilitating eating disorders later on. Even if orthorexia never becomes part of the clinical diagnostic literature, flagging health and food concerns that are disproportionate to the risk these foods pose to the individual may be valuable. "It's a tragedy that we've developed this moralistic, restrictive and unhappy relationship" with eating, said one mother of an anorexic daughter "I think it is making kids nutty, it's sucking the life out of our relationship with food" (Ellin 2009, p.2).

Addressing familial issues about food may become necessary for children whose anxiety disorders surround food in the future, and even amongst normal children experiencing developmental conflicts, as food battles become increasingly part of the American ideological cultural landscape. Like sexuality conflicts are now an accepted part of adolescent self-definition, sadly food may become a similarly difficult issue for children and teens.

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