"If you had a window into her inner life you'd see little else but self-condemnation for lapses, self-praise for success, strict self-control to resist temptation and conceited superiority over anyone who indulges in impure dietary habits."

Transferring all value onto eating makes it a true disorder, he said, one that is broken only when the afflicted person breaks free of obsession.

Tom Billings, a 48-year-old San Francisco computer consultant and co-founder of the alternative diet Web site Beyondveg.com, believes he was orthorexic 30 years ago when he followed a diet of mostly raw fruits and vegetables.

"I had this idea that if I ate something that wasn't on this approved list that I would be impure," he said.

Billings said he thought about food all the time and was so hung up on his diet that he couldn't go out to dinner with friends. At the same time he had anorexic tendencies, his 6-foot-1 frame plummeted to 88 pounds.

Eventually, he got fed up of thinking about food all the time and returned to a more diverse diet. He now eats raw and cooked foods, and will even eat chocolate occasionally.

"I've worked through those issues and I don't see it being a risk for myself. But I do see other people getting on restrictive diets," said Billings, who today weighs 170 pounds.

"I've seen this obsession with food purity. ... It's not as dangerous as anorexia and it's not as messy as bulimia because you can hide behind this screen of saying 'I'm trying to eat right.'"

Critics question whether orthorexia is a true disorder.

"If these people are obsessed with eating healthy food because they want to be healthy -- as opposed to wanting to lose weight -- that can be an abnormality but it still would deviate from eating disorders as a major theme," said Michael Lowe, a professor of clinical and health psychology at MCP Hahnemann University in Philadelphia.

"Unless their objective is to dramatically change their weight or shape, then I would be reluctant to call it an eating disorder," he said. "It might be obsessive-compulsive, it might be some form of a psychosomatic problem."

Since Health Food Junkies, Bratman has written other books about alternative medicine and has worked as a consultant. But he doesn't fancy himself an eating disorder specialist.

"I would just like somebody to read the book and take a look at themselves," he said.

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