Healthy Eating- Is Right The New Wrong?

Passionate student of healthy eating – whatever that may be – Verne Maree ponders a new and very first-world condition: orthorexia nervosa.

- Verna Maree

What constitutes a good diet? I’ve been able to answer that question with complete confidence at any time over the past 30 years and more. Nowadays, though, I’m sometimes less sure of the answer … and for someone who really likes to be right, that can be a worry.

“Eating healthily” has meant different things to different people at different times and in different places. A “healthy appetite” has never meant a preference for muesli and acai berries; instead, it implies that you pack away rather too many of the groceries. And when friends or colleagues from the Indian community in Durban (where I grew up) remarked that you were looking “healthy”, they were simply saying you looked fat.

So much for semantics. The problem is that we’re so deluged with nutritional surveys, guidelines and opinions – many of them mutually conflicting – that it’s difficult to keep your head above water. Which path to choose? Say you’re already preparing your own whole food organic meals from scratch; should you righteously cut out gluten, dairy, carbs, meat, fat, salt? Is vegan the purer way to go? Raw vegan? Fruitarian? How about a 30- day water-only fast? Enter the new problem child of nutrition: orthorexia nervosa.

Ortho-what?