Guilty Pleasure?

With food bloggers and Instagrammers being accused of promoting the rise of so-called ‘clean eating’, Celia Jarvis explores how negative emotions such as guilt around ‘wrong’ foods could be a sign of what some consider to be a new kind of eating disorder

- Celia Jarvis

It’s 7am in East London, and Pinakin Patel has just completed an hour of yoga and now he’s ready for his breakfast. Like every other morning, Pinakin will start his day with a glass of orange juice, followed by fresh fruit and then some dried fruit. For his 11am snack he’ll enjoy a carrot, cucumber and broccoli salad, finished off with five almonds, five cashew nuts and exactly 10 black grapes. At around midday Pinakin will have his last meal of the day, a vegetable curry, before heading out for a five-mile walk.

While some may view Pinakin as an extremely healthy eater, could he also be crossing the line towards orthorexia nervosa?

Orthorexia, from orthos meaning straight or right and orexis meaning appetite, is literally the fixation on correct eating. The term was first coined in 1997, in an essay written by Steven Bratman for Yoga Journal. Bratman described it as: “an unhealthy fixation with what the individual considers to be healthy eating.”1

Orthorexia usually starts with the desire to cut out foods considered to be unhealthy, such as processed, sugary or fatty foods, and increase the intake of fresh foods. However, the problem begins when healthy eating turns obsessive and the list of forbidden foods gets longer. Refined carbohydrates, dairy, sugar and meat are commonly removed from the diet. Fruit and vegetables remain but in some cases only if they’re organic, locally-grown and GM-free. Such a restricted diet inevitably leads to weight-loss. However, unlike anorexia and bulimia, the focus of orthorexia is on healthy eating and any weight-loss is incidental.