Talk:Orthorexia nervosa

This article was nominated for deletion on June 9, 2005; the consensus was to keep. For discussion, please see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Orthorexia nervosa.

POV

"The subject may avoid certain unhealthy foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, man-made food-additives, animal products, or other ingredients considered by the subject to be unhealthy"

This must be balanced, there are fats, preservatives and man-made additives that ARE unhealthy. The way this article is weasel worded it makes it seem as if the 'subject' is by in error by default.

"Products that are preserved with additives can be considered dangerous. Industrial products can be seen as artificial, whereas fruits and vegetables can be seen as healthy."

Fruits and vegetables "can" be seen as healthy? Really? Perhaps because they are?

Seriously is this a joke? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orasis (talk • contribs) 19:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We have to stick to what our sources say. In this case, because it's not an officially accepted diagnostic condition, there are not many sources to pick from. Ideally it would be better to reword it to emphasize that Bratman and others are speaking of people who take it to extremes, and illustrate it with stories of people who spend all their free time growing organic vegetables, etc. because they don't trust store-bought produce, and in the long run end up more unhealthy than they would have been otherwise because they never get enough to eat. Seriously, if you watch the Stossel video that will get you a picture perfect idea of the kind of mindset that orthorexia is meant to be about. If you want something shorter (I think it's about 20 minutes long) you can read stories about self-identified orthorexics on beyondveg.com (the owner of the site is a vegetarian who used to be a rawfoodist but quit because he couldn't stop losing weight). I'm not saying these people are 100% correct in everything they say, just that they are some examples of people who have contributed to the popular definition of orthorexia. —Soap— 23:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Article of humor?

Really? Should this facetious 'condition' even have it's own page on Wikipedia? According to this every bodybuilder in the world has an extreme mental disorder, in fact if we go further every non-human animal is also mentally sick. I suppose we should tell the wolves and lions to stop focusing so much upon meats and you know what they consider to be 'healthy' foods. Poor dears, they are obsessing too much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orasis (talk • contribs) 19:28, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

If you want to see the page deleted feel free to take it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. I would recommend reading some of the links above even if you don't agree with them, though. —Soap— 23:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

This

This article classify people who avoid preservatives as mentally ill. I avoid one particular type of preservative because if I eat it, I get a migraine every time (a lot of people do). Also, I have to avoid anything with chocolate/cocoa, else I get a migraine, too. In many cases, my diet socially isolates me. Does that make me mentally ill? No, there is something wrong with this article and maybe the diagnose. --80.203.118.137 (talk) 15:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussion going on here is worrying and counterproductive

As a psych graduate student, and a person who has worked in a health-food store - I definitely know what orthorexia looks like, and that it exists. It is certainly a separate disease from anorexia, and should be diagnosed and treated as such. The associated behaviors and cognitive hang-ups are entirely different.

Furthermore: simply because there is little research done does not denote that this isn't worth researching further. It is a new phenomenon in a recently aware culture. Health food disorder has been around for a very long time, but has only risen to the prevalence it has recently. I don't understand why there are such a huge number of people questioning the reality of the disease. I imagine that they might be self-protective of their own habits, which they feel the symptoms listed might capture.

If that's the case - that is really worrying, that mild to severe sufferers might be actively trying to crush the development of information about this. I think this article deserves protection and more oversight. 69.121.5.18 (talk) 21:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's your chance then. Write a paper on the subject. Get it published. Get a reviewer to publish an assessment. Then we can cite what the reviewer has to say. LeadSongDog come howl 19:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it a "disease" or is it not a "disease"? That isn't the point, and I venture to guess it wasn't Bratman's point either (from his own comments). The question should not be whether this is a "diagnosable mental illness," but whether or not, using latinized terminology or not, it is a valuable observation. I think it is a valuable observation. I agree with the person who identified him- or herself as a psych graduate student: There are people who have this problem. I know because I, myself, had this problem years ago, and I fell into a crowd of "raw foods" eaters who also had the problem. Some had the problem to a much greater degree than I did. For some, this problem was based on the desire to be healthy which became an obsession; for others it was based on a desire to be "pure," either physically, or, as they saw it, spiritually. In many cases, I think it had to do with an underlying desire to feel in control of one's life. "If I can control my food, which is so central to my existence, then my existence in under control." I will add, however, that the self-diagnosis questions listed in the article are very problematic. To want to eat at home because you have more control over the food you consume, for example, is not *necessarily* a sign of obsessiveness or compulsion - after all, in my view there is no question that food in many countries is polluted with toxins from pesticides; some restaurants' hygiene is atrocious, and so forth. This is one of those fascinating areas where a social problem (a hazardous system of food production) and individual psychological problems may overlap in some people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.253.243.96 (talk) 06:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

--Nonsense. Of course a person who has a goal whether it be to be fit, live longer or be an athlete or bodybuilder is going to obsess over their diet and consume healthy foods. Could the same be achieved on a diet of big macs? In fact, is it now normal to consume big macs? Wow, Mcdonald's is going to love to fund this research, eh? One fatty big mac plus sodium bombed fries and a sugary coke per week means you are not insane my friend! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orasis (talk • contribs) 19:42, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

"As Bratman freely admits..."

I removed this part of the sentence from the article, because

• it would be silly to deny anything as obvious and controllable as whether or not a disorder is part of DSM or ICD;
  
• this is an article on orthorexia, not on Bratman. It is not relevant what Bratman freely admits or not. Lova Falk talk 13:57, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I know this is a joke article, but...

... even for Wikipedia's "The Onion" section, couldn't some parts of the article be re-written? For example, the sentence:

Orthorexic sufferers have specific feelings about the foods they are avoiding.

Is about as vapid as any sentence can possibly be. Some people have feelings about things they don't eat. Really? I don't eat snails (as the French) or termites (as many hunter-gatherers), I find both ideas a little revolting, and I'm slightly overweight, meaning I couldn't possibly have orthorexia nervosa. In fact, this sentence describes every human that's ever lived, as food choice is a powerful sign humans have always used to distinguish "us" civilized people from "them" barbarian wretches.

I've picked on this one example in detail, but much of the article is like this. The very next sentence is full of weasel words. Whomever wrote this obviously loved composing sentences that seem to contain an empirical statement, but actually say nothing at all: Orthorexic subjects typically have specific feelings towards different types of food. Really? The Onion doesn't have to repeat themselves like this, which is why they're more entertaining than our joke articles. The only pieces of this article that seem to have any information content are the giveaways where it says, basically, this isn't really serious: There has been no investigation into whether there may be a biological cause specific to orthorexia nervosa. and Although it is not an official medical diagnosis, and it is not listed in the DSM-IV[11] or planned to be included in the DSM-V...

I'm sure the trolls and humorists can do a better job of this than what's on display until now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.91.201.209 (talk) 21:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Point of View = Steven Bratman, MD, Quackbuster Crusader

I just heard the words Orthorexia Nervosa on Coast to Coast radio. The host mentioned an article in The Guardian, and although the 2009 and 2006 articles have no current corollary, this page is bound to get a little more traffic as a result of national radio.

Dr. Bratman may not want this Wikipedia article to be about him, but he has claimed to have coined this phrase, and I have no reason to doubt that. Further, there do appear to be a large number of OCD behaviours constellated around food, and in the absence of a DSM category this descriptive may help a person frame a particular narrative around eating disorders.

What presents as a red flag for me is that Dr. Bratman has a long history of framing issues that he doesn't agree with in a sort of 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' reasoning. When I first started seeing his Quackbuster site in the mid-90's he presented some of the most vitriolic and contemptuous derision of therapies or points of view for which he finds no value. This may or may have changed in 15 years, yes there are plenty of charlatans, yes there are people with eating disorders, but either way it remains nearly impossible to separate his Quixotic history and point of view from his current shaping of the content of this article. It may not be hagiography but the article still reads like content on the inside of a book flap. He has significant interest in seeing that this article and links to him are shaped in a manner that benefit him and his point of view.

With no DSM category the article clearly needs to be identified as a theory by an MD author with a history of crusading against alternative therapies he finds disdainful, and it should link to a more extensive exploration of that history. I don't intend to make this ad hominem but there is a very large elephant in the room here with a very large point of view behind it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyclopedic (talk • contribs) 06:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Article contains mass WP:POV errors

This article contains point of view errors, it implies that somebody who focuses on eating healthily is socially unacceptable. This is hardly neutral. Phrases such as "if the sufferer does not eat healthily enough, malnutrition can result" are unacceptable. Another example in the Symptoms section "symptoms of orthorexia nervosa may include obsession with healthy eating" this should be removed or rephrased.

As a side note, I would hardly consider this article subject of any noteworthiness, "orthorexic sufferers have specific preferences about the foods they are eating and avoiding" is akin to myself and individuals I know who avoid McDonalds and other fast food stores because the food tastes as though it is shortening my life. 130.56.82.30 (talk) 19:24, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

A category for these idiosyncratic "illnesses"

As with True-believer syndrome this term has been proposed as a diagnose or illness, however it has not been embraced by the mainstream therapeutic community as such. I'm sure there are other, comparable terms for which we have articles, so I'm proposing the creation of a category for these non-approved disease labels. __meco (talk) 08:24, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

This assumes that there's some single entity in charge of "approving" diseases, or even their names. It is not unusual for rare diseases and diseases for which the pathophysiology is unknown (or poorly understood) to have a half-dozen separate and sometimes conflicting names, descriptions, and diagnostic criteria for decades. Everyone will agree that "person may die because she is afraid of eating something 'unhealthy'" is a medical problem; not everyone will agree on its name or where to draw the line between 'healthy' and 'diseased'. One of the milestones in understanding a disease is the conference at which all of the diverse viewpoints get together and hash out a consensus definition. The fact that this hasn't yet happened doesn't make any disease or its various names any less valid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The reality is that psychiatry does have regulatory bodies and professional associations and not a single one of them recognizes this alleged disease. Moreover it seems to have been given minimal to zero attention by the top psychiatric and medical journals despite being an almost decade old concept. Finally, the fact that its "symptoms" (obsession with healthy eating) seem to be identical to the *definition* and concept of the "disorder" (obsession with healthy eating) suggests that there is little reason to think that this concept is anything more than a label someone assigned to frankly fairly common behavior and preoccupations - absent any external confirmation that this is a coherent syndrome. Since there seems to be none, and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a meta-advertisement to lend credibility to someone's book, this article's tone should reflect the skepticism of the medical community as a whole and not the certainty of a handful of people within it. N0thingbetter (talk) 06:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)