For the Health of It: Disentangling “Healthy Eating” and “Orthorexia”
When is “healthy eating” not so healthy? The line between “normal” and “pathological” eating behaviours is blurry, to say the least. For some time, researchers have been attempting to define a “new” category of eating disorders: orthorexia. This category would capture “obsessions” with “healthy eating” that are (presumably) not already captured in current diagnostic criteria for eating disorders.
If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you might already know how I feel about the liberal sprinkling of the suffix “orexia” onto behaviours related to food, exercise and body image (see, for example, my post on “drunkorexia”). The problematics of language use and eating disorders are numerous; we tend to use diagnoses as currency in discussing eating disorders, often glossing over the intricacies of behaviours with food and exercise by lumping them into (continually shifting) diagnostic criteria.
Of course, labeling is necessary to a certain extent. Diagnoses can help … Continue reading →