Customer Reviews

Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa - the Health Food Eating Disorder

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Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating is a thorough exploration of a common but normally undiscussed problem in the health food community---a healthy focus which progresses into a fixation or obsession with "correct" or "right" eating. I like to think of it as the energy with which we focus on healthy eating. For example, you can have a healthy desire to lose weight...if you focus on this desire to the exclusion of other, more important things, you can slip into anorexia nervosa, and you may not realize it until someone else points it out to you. Dr. Bratman's book is this "someone" shining the light on the psychological factors behind so-called "healthy obsessions".

This book was extremely helpful to me. I have previously followed various healthy diets, from vegetarian to vegan to raw foods, and struggled with balancing the many positives of such choices with some of the negatives. Health Food Junkies helped me to see myself more clearly, to see sort out my various psychological issues, and to put my desire to eat healthfully into balance. I think I'm making healthier choices overall with respect to my diet and my life in general.

There are many psychological factors to consider when eating healthfully, and some of the ones that Dr. Bratman covers are: control and safety issues, fears, idealized body images, using food as a primary source of spiritual satisfaction, food Puritanism, deprivation and self-punishment, creating an identity, being separate from others, hiding and escaping from life, and more.

Styles of eating which are covered are food allergies, raw foods, macrobiotics, the Zone, candida, "Eat Right for Your Type", vitamin pills, the beer and pizza diet, and several other extreme diets.

The author, Steven Bratman, M.D. speaks from experience, as he was previously a raw foodist and a macrobiotic eater, plus has helped patients recover from obsessions with healthful eating that in some cases has even cost them their lives, and often, their health. At a minimum, such an obsession costs one's emotional and spiritual well-being. He is absolutely totally in favor of eating well, but not at the expense of other parts of a healthy lifestyle.

This book will help you put your interest in healthful eating into balance. Even if you think it is in balance, it's good to read just to be aware of how things can get when you veer away, sometimes very gradually, from moderation. If you think moderation is a bad thing, you really, really should read this book. If you know someone whose eating obsessions are unusual, you'd find this interesting, too.
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