Are You Orthorexic? Our Obsession with Healthy Eating

We seem to have forgotten that humans are omnivorous. Around the world and throughout history, people have thrived on diets diverse and extreme enough to shame the fad diet section in any modern bookstore. Populations have flourished on staples like whale blubber, insects, roots, or grains, often with little else. Even in recent centuries of European plenty, generations of aristocracy touched virtually nothing but sugary cakes and alcohol, while peasants across the street survived on rotten vegetables and hard biscuits; yet both experienced similar outcomes. In fact we differ little in this respect from the humble rat, able to live healthy lives on just about anything we can stomach.

Where we break from the rat is in our intelligence (though, as the impressed father of a rat-rearing daughter, I find the difference, in some cases, may not be as marked as we think). We have the conscious ability to analyze the content of our food, to understand its constituents. We know that too little food causes malnutrition and too much makes us fat, and we understand the consequences of both. The benefit of this understanding has driven some of us to seek deeper, and sometimes illusory, targets of super-health that are not merely within the wide margins of healthy eating, but that attempt to constrict those margins to allow only very specific foods in hyper-controlled portions. When taken to the extreme, the compulsion for such restrictive diets can lead to an eating disorder that may actually cause nutritional deficiencies (even as far as starvation and death) or, even more commonly, social isolation and obsessive behavior. This disorder is called orthorexia, from the Greek meaning "appetite for the correct food." While the anorexic feels compelled to eat ever less in pursuit of an impossible body image, the orthorexic fanatically focuses on certain foods and avoids others, chasing an imagined model of perfect health, sometimes to the point of delusion.

The dietary profile of an orthorexic could be anything, depending on his or her particular pet diet. It could be driven by a fad diet such as low-carb or low-fat or "paleo" or anythingâ€"it could be a bodybuilding or weight loss plan. It is whatever that person perceives to be the "ideal" diet, regardless of its actual nutritional value (like rats with different gastronomies, humans will generally do just fine on any diet, fad or otherwise). The psychological component of orthorexia may be more obvious. They may refuse food served to them when a guest, they may berate their friends or family for eating something, they may avoid social situations where food or drink they avoid will be served. They may become "healthier-than-thou" and look down upon friends, family, or coworkers with more typical eating patterns. And it is this impact upon their ability to enjoy normal interaction that characterizes a diagnosable, and hopefully treatable, disorder. When dietary concerns erode happiness, there is a problem.

As the growth of the Internet has driven an explosion in the spread of misinformation, belief in quasi-magical eating solutions has spread as well. A diagnosis such as orthorexia is important in that it is intended to help those whose quality of life has diminished as they have shifted focus to the pursuit of dietary optimization. As Jen Schwartz wrote in Popular Science, "They agonize over sourcing and cooking methods, isolate themselves from social situations, and develop magical thinking about what certain foods can do." Most likely, we can all think of at least one or two people right off the bat who appear to fit this description.

It is important to note that not all doctors agree that orthorexia deserves a place as a discrete condition. Many feel that its psychological components are already covered by obsessive-compulsive disorder, and its nutritional components are adequately handled by a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. Thus, orthorexia is not found in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5. But like "night eating syndrome" and a few others, orthorexia has only been rather recently described; first proposed in 1997 by Dr. Steven Bratman, it may make it into future editions of the DSM. The main reason it's not currently in there, according to Dr. Tim Walsh, who led the group responsible for the DSM's coverage of eating disorders, is not doubt but scarcity of study data due to the condition's newness.

Of the orthorexia studies that do exist, most have focused on making a reliable diagnosis. The current standard is called the ORTO-15 questionnaire, first proposed in 2004 by Dr. Lorenzo M. Donini et al. The questions cover the way food choices affect attitude and behavior. You can take the ORTO-15 right now, to see how you rank within the currently defined parameters:

THE TEST

	ALWAYS	OFTEN	SOMETIMES	NEVER
1. When eating, do you pay attention to the calories in the food?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
2. When you go in a food shop do you feel confused?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
3. In the last 3 months, did the thought of food worry you?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
4. Are your eating choices conditioned by your worry about your health status?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
5. Is the taste of food more important than the quality when you evaluate the food?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
6. Are you willing to spend more money to have healthier food?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
7. Does the thought of food worry you more than three hours a day?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
8. Do you allow yourself any eating transgressions?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
9. Do you think your mood affects your eating behavior?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
10. Do you think that conviction to eat only healthy food increases self-esteem?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
11. Do you think that eating healthy food changes your lifestyle (frequency of eating out, friends, etc.)?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
12. Do you think that consuming healthy food may improve your appearance?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
13. Do you feel guilty when transgressing?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
14. Do you think that on the market there is also unhealthy food?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]
15. At present, are you alone when having meals?	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

SCORING
Now total up your score as follows (note that the points for A, O, S, and N are different for the various questions):

1. A-2, O-4, S-3, N-1
2. A-4, O-3, S-2, N-1
3. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
4. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
5. A-4, O-3, S-2, N-1
6. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
7. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
8. A-4, O-3, S-2, N-1
9. A-4, O-3, S-2, N-1
10. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
11. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
12. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
13. A-2, O-4, S-3, N-1
14. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4
15. A-1, O-2, S-3, N-4

So what does your total say about your tendency toward orthorexia? We're not too sure yet. But a study published in 2011 by Dr. Carla E. Ramacciotti et al. came up with some interesting results when the test was self-administered to 177 adults in the general populationâ€"a relatively small sample size. The scoring is designed so that lower totals are more orthorexic. When the threshold was set to a high number of 40, 57.6% of respondents were deemed orthorexic. If the ORTO-15 is valid, the higher your score, the lower your risk of unhealthy compulsion toward healthy eating. If you score is below 40, it may be time to relax a bit and remember your omnivorous nature.

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