“Orthorexia, or orthorexia nervosa, is an eating disorder that involves an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating,” Alina Petre, MS, RD writes at alternet.org. “Unlike other eating disorders, orthorexia mostly revolves around food quality, not quantity. Unlike with anorexia or bulimia, people with orthorexia are rarely focused on losing weight.” TTAG reader PG connects the dots . . .
Dear TTAG, as a long time reader understanding the push to use mental illness as a criteria to deprive someone of their rights, this piece of news should serve as a warning against relying solely on the “expert” opinions of industry psychiatrists and psychologists.
Eating healthy, or wanting to eat healthy, can now be considered a mental disorder.? How long will it be before owning a gun, or just wanting to own a gun, will be classified as a mental disorder? And you knew it was it coming, but same for anyone questioning anything put forth by officialdom, including people questioning vaccine safety, gun laws . . . you name it.
Shit. My wife’s a vegeterian and she likes guns. I better go say goodbye to her.
This fits in perfectly with all the control freaks of the involuntary government. Must not encourage anyone to think for themselves or analyze what “master” tells us… just moo occasionally, and eat whatever is put in front of you. For a while anyway, until it’s your turn in the abattoir.
I agree with you MamaLiberty except I would say substitute “Baaa” for “Mooo” as they want us all to be sheep.
I normally would jump on the sh!t on the DSM and its generally crunchy attitude bandwagon, but I cannot here. Obsession with healthy eating is a legitimate concern/disorder. While I personally do not have first hand experience with this, a family member does, they are an RD that works with children and adolescents who exhibit these symptoms and other more classically defined eating disorders.
This isn’t simply I want to eat organic when possible, this is I will not eat anything that isn’t organic or natural. My food can’t come in a package of any kind. I won’t eat anything that is even remotely unhealthy including but not limited to: sugar, fats, red meat, carbs, processed foods, canned food, frozen food, various vitamins and minerals, dyes, and on and on. This is over an above any rational bounds of eating healthy or well that its not even in the same universe.
I see the connection being made, and I agree with the premise, we don’t want to fall victim to “gun lover” becoming a “legitimate” mental disorder. This isn’t that.
As a T1 diabetic I see this a lot with type 2 diabetics. Some follow extremely restrictive diets. Ultralow carbs, no sugars, coconut oil in their coffee etc. ( yuck ). Sure I have it easier, all I have to do is calculate my carbs and take a shot. For those on the Dr. Bernstein diet though my way is bad.
I’m T2. I follow an extremely restrictive diet. Ultralow carbs, no sugars, cream in my coffee, steak dinners etc. ( yum). Sure I have it easier than you. All I have to do is calculate my carbs and not take a shot.
I would offer that it’s merely an extension, or symptom, of some other, deeper-seated “issue”.
But still, the real evil of the food world isn’t carbs, or even fat. It’s the powder – sugar. We’ve had mass-access to sugars of all kinds for maybe 50 years the way we consume them now. That coupled with insanely overly processed foods.
There was a book and study out in the early ’70s that pointed this out. He was ridiculed, and eventually run out by the other academics from the fat and carbs camp – despite the French Paradox and all the other actual evidence. There’s another researcher who’s name I misplaced as well, who just reconfirmed the conclusion from the ’70s. In fact, he had never even heard of the research.
You are correct, eating disorders generally go hand in hand with much deeper psychological issues; ots of severe anxiety, OCD, bad parenting, and other legitimate mental illnesses the kids can’t be diagnosed with yet because they aren’t 18.
You are correct, there is a ton of sugar in everything, but I think it is difficult to pin all food problems on one thing. Personally, I subscribe to the everything in moderation theory and it works well for me. Obviously this won’t work for people who have poor impulse control or who are simply ignorant of or don’t bother to read what the label says. Much of it seems like it comes down to genetic and lifestyle factors above anything else.
The underlying condition is what in medical jargon is referred to as “being a progressive.” As in, not just believing whatever nonsense the marketing department at Whole Foods is telling you today, in addition to whatever drivel the currently fashionable comedian on HBO is spouting. But indeed, to go out of your way to believe it even harder. The stronger your belief in the nonsense, the holier you are. We’re at risk from these people, as one of the things coked up HBO comedians tend to talk bad about, is guns and gunowners.
Oh, and the sane way to eat healthy, is simply to get enough exercise, so that you need enough calories, that even just average nutrient density food, when consumed in the quantities required to meet your caloric needs, provides you with everything you need nutrient wise. Sitting on the couch chewing on WhackoRoots, because it is “the traditional food” of some population with a 30 year life expectancy at birth, is simply donating money to sales hacks.
It’s not just healthy eating, it’s a form of anorexia where people would rather starve than eat “wrong.” People who would rather die than eat GMO foods, or non-organic, or gluten (when not actually gluten allergic). We are seeing it more and more.
Nature’s way of thinning the herd?
Talk about your first world problems.
Word.
“we are seeing it more and more”….Who is “we”? And what is “it” exactly?
Keep in mind folks the success of our species is that we are omnivores. Anorexia, or gluttony is a mental disorder manifesting itself through the amount of food consumption. It only manifests itself with Western Cultures because we done away with starvation.
Orthorexia is not a disorder unless it effects everyday living and interpersonal relationships to a point where it becomes distressing for the individual. For example, an individual won’t go out or see their family because the food they eat isn’t “healthy”. Instead, that person isolates at home and feels depression, anxiety, etc. If an orthorexic was to eat a donut they would extreme panic and would probably engage in excessive exercise or starvation. This behavior would come before any other life priority- work, school, sleep, family, taking care of pet. If an individuals life is not greatly effected by a specific behavior, it’s not a disorder. The same goes for someone who is a gambler. It’s not a disorder unless that person is suffering negative consequences from their gambling along with extreme emotional distress.
I understand where you are coming from with this article, but you’re not understanding what makes something a disorder. They aren’t calling behavior that falls within the norm as a disorder. Comparing this to simple gun ownership is missing the big picture. You could compare this to someone who hordes firearms, lives alone, experiences large amounts of isolation and loneliness, but is too afraid to be away from their guns to live a normal life. If that person was happy with living that way it wouldn’t be classified as a disorder. It lacks mental distress. I wouldn’t put it passed liberals to try to create simple gun ownership as a mental disorder, but TTAG’s analogy in this case is poor. It indicates a basic understanding of what a medical disorder actually is.
basic misunderstanding***
“I understand where you are coming from with this article, but you’re not understanding what makes something a disorder. They aren’t calling behavior that falls within the norm as a disorder. Comparing this to simple gun ownership is missing the big picture.”
anon, I think it was you who missed the big picture – the point of the article was not about the specific mental “disorder”, but about the government’s ability to classify something as a mental disorder and then use that as a legal means to discriminate against that person and restrict their Constitutionally protected rights.
If the government determines (in their infinite wisdom) that certain mental disorders make you a “prohibited person” and the government is the sole arbiter of which of those disorders it may use for this classification then the government is the sole arbiter of who may or may not exercise their Second Amendment protected right to keep and bear arms. Here is the issue, in a nutshell:
If you concede that the government has the authority the create, maintain and enforce a list of persons who, in the opinion of the government may not exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, how will you keep your name off of that list?
Oh for goodness sake. “Orthorexia?” Seriously? It’s a made up term from the 1990s, with no clinical consensus on what traits, behaviors, parameters even define it, and it isn’t recognized as a condition by the mental health profession. Estimates of affliction rates are reportedly as high as 90%! Sooo……pretty much everyone is “obsessed” with healthy eating? If true, wouldn’t that then be…normal? That’s probably the whole point.
Redefine normal as abnormal, thereafter it’s easier to demonize and destroy the newly abnormal and replace it with the previously abnormal, newly normal. This sounds like recent salvos from the antis, whereby they claim that gun ownership is declining (you’re abnormal for having one) and that gun ownership played no central role in Colonial life or the taming of the West (only the abnormal people ever had one).
This is why it’s so important not to sit down, shut up, and hide your gun ownership. Imposing self-censorship and self-shaming only reinforces the myth that gun ownership is shady, distasteful, and déclassé.
Shouldnt the government be mandating universal access to “ortho” options now?
I like that I can leave my safe space dressed as an 8 year old girl and clog the toilets in the girls shower at the YWCA now without being unfairly ostracized for the genitals cruely forced upon me by the scourge of genetics but to have an ortho option while doing so only seems fair.
I need some muscle over here! I can smell a Trump voter!
Remember, wanting to wear a wig, cut your own dick off and call yourself a woman is a beautiful expression of your real self.
But if you want to own particular inanimate objects, you need to be institutionalized.
100% of people who become addicted to dioxygen literally die. Any amount of exposure should be unacceptable in modern society, and those who choose to indulge in dioxygen use at special spas and bars have a mental illness and should be forced to undergo treatment. The only sane course of action is to give complete control of the dioxygen supply to the government, because they know best. Once it is carefully rationed out peace will prevail.
We need the same dihydrogen oxide as well!
Everything is a mental disorder. Who’s to say who has a disorder? What is “normal”. Phycologists often get into phycology for a reason. Because they have their own mental issues. What you consider crazy, I consider fun. And what you do looks like insanity to me. Take it from from me, I’m a doctor… In Brainwashing.
Oooh! Do you play a doctor on television?
Clickbait trash and not firearms related.
You’re better than this.
Maybe we’re just smarter than you. The fact that there is no picture of a gun or direct reference to some firearm does not make the subject irrelevant to this site.
The issue is whether or not the government can establish mental disease as a factor that allows them to (unconstitutionally) prohibit a person diagnosed with certain “disorders” as prohibited from exercising their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Since the Second Amendment says specifically, “…shall not be infringed.” then this is a legitimate topic for discussion on a gun-related blog.
#sand
“#sand”
I LOL’d
WTF is wrong with you people? You are acting like statists. People are different, period…with as much crap in our food supply these days, can you really blame someone for wanting “real” food?!
Right? And really like, man, I’d love having this “disorder” like, “ohh man, I can’t eat that cheeseburger man! I need a salad!” Shit, PLEASE give me that disorder. Losing weight is so goddamn hard. And I F****in HATE salad. I think this study was honestly written up by a bunch of fat scientists who were upset they couldn’t eat salad.
It’s all fun and games until someone you love goes through an eating disorder. Dollars to doughnuts (pun intended) you wouldn’t be making your ignorant and, frankly, thoughtless comment if you have been through it. Trying to convince someone you love that they need to eat or they will die is not something I’d wish on anyone.
I know someone with orthorexia. He distills bottled water and then adds his own minerals he bought on Amazon. And if it doesn’t say “mountain spring” on the water bottle, he won’t drink it. It’s obnoxious and annoying as hell.
I’m sure he’d happily drink a can of Coke if he was genuinely dehydrated.
A surgeon (not American, he’d probably be sued out of job and home) told me about operating on children of Jehovah’s Witnesses who insisted he couldn’t give the kid blood. And how he did the operation anyway, and informed them their kid was now about to bleed to death. Every single one of them came around and saved their kid. Just this once…. iiiit’s diiiiferent…
In general, stupidity only lasts until things get serious, and it starts having real costs.
Eating healthy isn’t the disorder. An obsession with eating healthy, that interferes with normal social function, is the disorder.
The only thing less reliable than “expert opinions of industry psychiatrists and psychologists”, are the “expert opinions” of random internet lay-persons.
“The only thing less reliable than “expert opinions of industry psychiatrists and psychologists”, are the “expert opinions” of random internet lay-persons”….Including yours, but thanks for sharing your lay-person opinion.
The headline’s pretty misleading. They’re not saying that healthy eating itself is a mental disorder, but that irrational obsession with it to the exclusion of other activities is. It’s not the “healthy eating” part that’s the problem, it’s the “obsession” part.
This would be more like the gun version of what the article is talking about: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/26/us/south-carolina-gun-stash-seized/
Must be a slow day because TTAG is making a mountain out of a mole hill on this one.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned with Orthorexia if you starve yourself because nothing meets your health-food criteria, or you irrationally eat health-foods because you trust your local hippie for dietary advice.
In sociological theory this is called the “medicalization of deviance”. Among other things the idea has turned alcoholism and drug addiction from moral failures to diseases. The problem with doing that with guns is that, unlike addictions to booze and drugs, most Americans don’t see anything wrong with owning guns.
Ortho WHAT? Back in the old daze they called those folks “health nuts”-or food faddists(or worse). I wish I could afford to always eat healthy. I can’t right now. I have some health problems and my # 1 goal is NEVER say anything about guns/depression/violence to any doctor or nurse person. Sheesh…
Not recognised by either the APA or the DSM. Current state this is at the same level of mental disorder as hoplophobia…
I’d love to see at least anecdotal evidence of someone deprieved of his/hers rights because of said “disorder”. Which is no more recognized that, say, phobia of striker-fired pistols.
Schmuckophobia jackoffia is a thinking impairment that involves an unhealthy obsession with calling every human behavior a disorder.
Schmuckophobia jackoffia typically affects psychiatrists, most of whom are nucking futs.
Voting for sanders or the traveling pants suit is crazy so we better disarm them quick.
Sorry, you really missed the boat on this one. Wanting to eat healthy isn’t a mental disorder. It’s the taking it to an unrealistic, unhealthy extreme (i.e., refusing to eat unless it’s non-gmo, hormone free, organic free range kale grown hydroponically).
This is such a straw man argument it’s not funny. Next, are you going to say that anorexia is made up? Because, hey, lot’s of people want to be thinner, and so anyone and everyone who wants to be thinner must have a mental disorder.
And yes, if someone was so obsessed with guns that they began acting irrationally… i.e. cashed out their retirement and sold off their house to buy more guns… I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to say they were suffering from mental illness anymore than if they did the same thing for dolls or motorcycles or any other object.
Good Lord, it’s crap like this that gives the anti-gunners ammunition that we’re all a bunch of loonies.
i.e. cashed out their retirement and sold off their house to buy more guns
Thanks for the investment advice, Jim Cramer. Meanwhile, one of my exes just took a 50% loss on her house while the value of my guns has increased by more than 20%.
Hey years ago I competed in bodybuilding. Wanting zero bodyfat IS OCD. Healthy isn’t. And I sure looked good then…
No, it’s the public ignoring the elephants in the room like this one that guarantees the continual erosion of our remaining rights. You missed the point entirely.
An obsession with anything becomes a disorder. However, it is often subjective when it comes to determining if it is a disorder. A lot of these disorders are very vague and what makes something like healthy eating become a disorder is also vague.
This is why I am against mental health being a criteria for most law.
Since the Gov considers smoking and drinking self destructive behavior, it won’t be long till that gets you on the restricted list too. Pay with cash folks, Gov catches most criminals via the paper trail.
“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” – Redd Foxx
I guess raising grown children that have positive body images and healthy eating habits is disorderly. I also admit that I did lose my frikkin mind when I discovered that all that hard work and education got me the skills that got the career that got the paycheck that could afford high quality food for a whole family. I banished barf in a box mixes from our home and we moved toward fresh rather suddenly while the children were still very young. We learned to prepare food and to appreciate what real food tastes like (it’s different to Micky D’s by a long way).
I don’t know about my conscious decision qualifying for a mental disorder. I do know that working up from homelessness to a member of the 2% means I can afford high quality chow and I’m not ashamed to enjoy it, to feed it to my children, to teach them to do the same and to elect not to eat low quality garbage just because it might be convenient or free. I’d rather not eat if it’s got to be junk. You only get 1 body. Don’t fark it up.
Reading the comments, it seems some missed the point entirely. Ignoring these elephants in the room guarantees the ongoing erosion of our remaining rights.
Orthorexia is different than gun ownership. It’s like being obsessed with healthy eating to the point where one actually harms themselves through malnutrition.
Brian, you might need a reading comprehension course to brush up on your reading skills. No where in the article or the comment was gun ownership compared to obsessive caused malnutrition.