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THE DOWN-SIDE OF WATCHING EVERYTHING YOU EAT Health-food mania Doctor defines obsession with healthy foods, calls it 'orthorexia nervosa'
Bratman's own extremes in dietary purity peaked in the 1970s when he was living on an organic farm in New York. He disdained to eat any vegetable that had been plucked from the ground more than 15 minutes earlier, and chewed each mouthful at least 50 times. He lectured friends on the evils of processed food and once feared a piece of pasteurized cheese would give him pneumonia. "To be that obsessed with eating healthy food is to be really out of balance," he said from his home in Fort Collins. Bratman coined a new term to define his illness, "orthorexia nervosa." He described it as an eating disorder whose sufferers fixate on eating proper food. The term uses "ortho," which means straight, correct and true, and "nervosa" to indicate obsession. Bratman, an expert on alternative medicine, has written several articles and a book on his theory. While the term is not recognized as a clinical diagnosis -- and Bratman hasn't lobbied for such recognition -- some officials in the field say he may have identified a dietary trend.
"He's on to something quite interesting," said Adam Drewnowski, director of the nutritional sciences program at the University of Washington School of Public Health. Drewnowski is also a member of the task force that established official criteria for eating disorders for the American Psychiatric Association. "I think there are consequences to being on a virtually fat-free vegetarian diet or a very restrictive diet," Drewnowski said. "(But) there's a distinction between a trend and a definable eating disorder." Last year, Bratman detailed orthorexia nervosa in a book called Health Food Junkies: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating (Broadway Books). Like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, the behaviour of orthorexics is marked by obsession, he said. "Eventually orthorexia reaches a point at which the orthorexic devotes most of her life to planning, purchasing, preparing and eating meals," he wrote.
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