You Are What You Eat
Those people who ruin dinner parties because they only eat raw fruit with antioxidants that has been organically grown by left-handed communist peasants are now officially mentally ill. They have their very own eating disorder - orthorexia nervosa.
The term "orthorexic" comes from the Greek ortho, meaning straight and correct, and was first coined in 1996 by Dr Steven Bratman, the American author of Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa.
Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food, but orthorexics are solely concerned with its quality. They obsess over salt content and E numbers, refuse to eat sugar and fat, and have such a hang-up about healthy eating that it restricts their diet and can, paradoxically, make them undernourished.
Since severe cases of anorexia are often fed through a tube to keep them alive, does this mean undernourished orthorexics should be force-fed Cheetos and Twinkies?
The term "orthorexic" comes from the Greek ortho, meaning straight and correct, and was first coined in 1996 by Dr Steven Bratman, the American author of Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa.
Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food, but orthorexics are solely concerned with its quality. They obsess over salt content and E numbers, refuse to eat sugar and fat, and have such a hang-up about healthy eating that it restricts their diet and can, paradoxically, make them undernourished.
Since severe cases of anorexia are often fed through a tube to keep them alive, does this mean undernourished orthorexics should be force-fed Cheetos and Twinkies?