Last summer, vegan food blogger Jordan Younger put a spotlight on orthorexia when she announced that she’s been suffering from it. She said that she couldn’t go into a grocery store without panicking because she put so much pressure on what she was eating; everything had to be pure.
Younger said that social media and the constant exposure to other people’s eating habits aggravated her orthorexia. And in certain fitness and health communities that focus on specific eating patterns (CrossFit, for instance, where the paleo diet is part of the deal), it can run particularly rampant because of the competitiveness associated with those activities.
Orthorexia is tricky to both diagnose and treat because it is so closely aligned with healthy eating. For the vast majority of people, it’s not a bad idea to cut back on sugar or to try to eat more greens, and people who struggle with it can easily claim that they’re just trying to eat right. The line of compulsion is hard to pin down.
So when should you start to worry about it? Nutrition therapist Sondra Kronberg says that it becomes a problem when it starts to interfere with your happiness. So if you, or someone you know, gets stressed out at the grocery store, or has stopped going out to eat because food restriction is more important than socializing, that’s when orthorexia becomes an issue.
Article Appeared @http://www.grindtv.com/lifestyle/pro-active/post/orthorexia-obsession-healthy-eating-rise/