Eating healthy can actually be unhealthy at times, doctors and dieticians said.

With the rise of food trends promoting purity and dietary cleansing movements, a new eating disorder has emerged. Orthorexia nervosa, an unhealthy obsession with being healthy, has health professionals struggling in their diagnoses.

Because orthorexia is not an official medical diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa are, it is less well-known and harder to diagnose. The term was coined in 1997 by Steven Bratman, a Colorado doctor who experienced the disorder, said Boston University Nutrition and Fitness Center nutritionist Sarah Butler.

“It’s very variable and depends on what they believe,” she said. “Your mind can’t think about other things. You’re only thinking about what you’re eating or what you’re going to eat next.”

The focus is on the purity and the quality of the food and not about being thin or losing weight. Orthorexics might follow a raw food diet or avoid food with animal products or preservatives and sugars in it, Butler said.

The restriction of foods also leads to social isolation, another symptom of orthorexia.
“If you are a raw foodist and all your friends are going to Noodle Street, you are not going to go along with them,” Butler said. “You might not go out at all.”

Student Health Services Behavioral Medicine Director Margaret Ross said she has only seen one student who was diagnosed with orthorexia in her 35 years of experience in the eating disorder field.

“It’s hard to know where to draw the line,” she said. “If it’s not included [in the DSM] maybe it will be included as binge eating disorder has been, as an asterisk and not a diagnosis in its own right.”

Treatment for orthorexia is considered on an individual basis and can often be challenging, Butler said.

“The person is very proud of what they are doing and fully believes it is for their health,” she said.

The idea of orthorexia can be seen as positive by many, she said. With the popularity of documentaries such as “Food Inc.” and the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” people are learning more about where their food came from and how it was made, Butler said.

“Thinking about those things is positive but it can become obsessive and it can overwhelm your life,” she said.

Students said they were not aware of the disorder.

College of Engineering junior Tyler Nappy expressed skepticism about the disorder.
“Personally, I think you can make anything a disorder,” he said. “It’s just tacking on a name to a person who just wants to eat healthy.”

School of Public Health graduate student and Fitness and Recreation Center employee Rachel Deering compared orthorexia to compulsive exercising disorder.

“They do classify a disorder for people who are addicted to going to the gym, so I guess it could be related to that,” she said. “I don’t know if I would classify it as a disorder. It’s not really a bad thing to always be eating healthy, but it may not be the most enjoyable life style.”

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences junior Kelsey Howarth said she would think of extreme healthy eating as a disorder if it interfered with the individual’s life.

“If someone’s healthy eating is not interrupting how they function on a basic level then I don’t think it would be considered a disorder,” she said. “But if they can’t go out with their friends, or they lose a significant amount of weight or it stops them from doing things they need to be doing, then yes, I think that would be a disorder.”