Orthorexia nervosa: A new eating behavior disorder?

WHAT'S UP WITH THOSE KIDS WHOSE PARENTS LET THEM DEVELOP "FOOD ALLERGIES"?

"Bigorexia" = HORRIBLE name, but otherwise pretty diagnostically sound.

"Orthorexia" = I think the focus on organics and production techniques sounds a false note there. Anyone who goes neurotic over their food consumption in those terms is really just part of a long line of people who've clamped down on their food intake for any number of social or political or especially religious reasons -- e.g. the New Journalism collection contains an early piece by Bob Christgau about a couple Village quasi-hippie types who followed a crackpot pseudo-religious purification diet until one of them died from it. Concerns about pesticides or whatever might be the modern excuse that the neurosis attaches itself to, but I'm not sure that's really the important or the essential bit -- just a way of thinking that can be used to justify maladaptive eating.

Great God Pan did a story a couple years back about a crackpot Mormon splinter Utah dude that starved his child on a weird fruitarian diet. I vaguely remember the story when it appeared.

I don't know... I knew one guy (a recording engineer) who sounded alot like the above description, and was really hung up on food, complaining that he could physically tell when food had carnuba wax, etc. But he had a quack Berkeley nutritionist that constantly reinforced his fears, and diagnosed roving food alleries that seemed to change from week to week... wheat sometimes, avocado at others. I'm unlikely to read that study, but there might be something to it.

Strongly held ideas about purity vs. pollution (using these words in their religious sense) underlie a lot of people's thinking about food these days. You might say this is hlaf of what Hinduism consists of. Mostly these ideas amount to personal quirks and hobby horses. But if these ideas lead to self-starvation in the midst of plenty, then they could reasonably be classified as a disorder.

After all, I don't drink from mud puddles or eat insects as a rule, but in a survival situation I would do both and be glad for the chance. Even Islam says you may eat and drink in Ramadan during daylight hours, if you are on a journey.

I actually don't know how they do diagnostics on this sort of thing: wouldn't it be better to classify the disorder as something general, and then note modern-day food-purity stuff as a particular expression of it? That way you wouldn't have to erect some new diagnosis for the religious fruititarian, or whatever. Surely treatment for these things would be roughly the same, right -- whether your gateway to maladaptive eating is social or religious or based on really whatever belief system you've dug up?

i used to work in a deli, and one woman would only eat 'what is fresh'. fresh to her meant what was just made - not even what had been made the night before or that morning, because we made a lot of salads and cold dishes the night before. but that was one of the milder examples i dealt with. one person came in and claimed they had an allergy so they couldn't eat the special, and then it turned out they were 'allergic' to the whole damned menu. well cook your own food then, why are you telling me this, i'm just doing my job.

there's something very safe (as in the todd haynes film) about this.

These people basically want to exist as pure spirit and are horrified that they possess a body with all its attendant lusts. It's all of a piece with self-scourging. They have not made peace with their flesh. The flesh does do some pretty sketchy things, pimples and diarrhea and the French Pox, etc. But the spirit can be just as blemished, especially in people who strive so mightily for holiness. Isn't that just hubris? What, do you think you're going to become a god? Eat your goddamn carnauba wax. It's YUMMY!!!!!

Oops, Beth Parker here, I mean up above. Scott was on my computer and didn't log out. Don't want you to think he's forsaken his heavy metal roots and gone all weird and therapeutic on you.

haha i was going to ask if that was a beth parker post.

I am prejudiced against these people, I'm sorry to say. They're so annoying.

They are a total drag as dinner guests, that's for sure.

classic: people who take a healthy (and educated) interest in organic foods, alternative medicines, and the like

dud: people who make others' lives a drag because of it

kevin trudeau (author of natural cures "they" don't want you to know about) may be a skeezy multi-level marketer with a checkered past, but aside from that i think he's on to something!