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Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating
The first book to identify the eating disorder orthorexia nervosa–an obsession with eating healthfully–and offer expert advice on how to treat it.
As Americans become better informed about health, more and more people have turned to diet as a way to lose weight and keep themselves in peak condition. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa–disorders in which the sufferer focuses on the quantity of food eaten–have been highly documented over the past decade. But as Dr. Steven Bratman asserts in this breakthrough book, for many people, eating “correctly” has become an equally harmful obsession, one that causes them to adopt progressively more rigid diets that not only eliminate crucial nutrients and food groups, but ultimately cost them their overall health, personal relationships, and emotional well-being.
Health Food Junkies is the first book to identify this new eating disorder, orthorexia nervosa, and to offer detailed, practical advice on how to cope with and overcome it. Orthorexia nervosa occurs when the victim becomes obsessed, not with the quantity of food eaten, but the quality of the food. What starts as a devotion to healthy eating can evolve into a pattern of incredibly strict diets; victims become so focused on eating a “pure” diet (usually raw vegetables and grains) that the planning and preparation of food come to play the dominant role in their lives.
Health Food Junkies provides an expert analysis of some of today’s most popular diets–from The Zone to macrobiotics, raw-foodism to food allergy elimination–and shows not only how they can lead to orthorexia, but how they are often built on faulty logic rather than sound medical advice. Offering expert insight gleaned from his work with orthorexia patients, Dr. Bratman outlines the symptoms of orthorexia, describes its progression, and shows readers how to diagnose the condition. Finally, Dr. Bratman offers practical suggestions for intervention and treatment, giving readers the tools they need to conquer this painful disorder, rediscover the joys of eating, and reclaim their lives.
As Americans become better informed about health, more and more people have turned to diet as a way to lose weight and keep themselves in peak condition. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa–disorders in which the sufferer focuses on the quantity of food eaten–have been highly documented over the past decade. But as Dr. Steven Bratman asserts in this breakthrough book, for many people, eating “correctly” has become an equally harmful obsession, one that causes them to adopt progressively more rigid diets that not only eliminate crucial nutrients and food groups, but ultimately cost them their overall health, personal relationships, and emotional well-being.
Health Food Junkies is the first book to identify this new eating disorder, orthorexia nervosa, and to offer detailed, practical advice on how to cope with and overcome it. Orthorexia nervosa occurs when the victim becomes obsessed, not with the quantity of food eaten, but the quality of the food. What starts as a devotion to healthy eating can evolve into a pattern of incredibly strict diets; victims become so focused on eating a “pure” diet (usually raw vegetables and grains) that the planning and preparation of food come to play the dominant role in their lives.
Health Food Junkies provides an expert analysis of some of today’s most popular diets–from The Zone to macrobiotics, raw-foodism to food allergy elimination–and shows not only how they can lead to orthorexia, but how they are often built on faulty logic rather than sound medical advice. Offering expert insight gleaned from his work with orthorexia patients, Dr. Bratman outlines the symptoms of orthorexia, describes its progression, and shows readers how to diagnose the condition. Finally, Dr. Bratman offers practical suggestions for intervention and treatment, giving readers the tools they need to conquer this painful disorder, rediscover the joys of eating, and reclaim their lives.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 2, 2001
4 people are currently reading
318 people want to read
About the author
Steven Bratman
31 books2 followers I spent many years writing books on evidence-based evaluation of alternative medicine, but only now, late in life, have I found what feels like my calling. These days, I write fairly difficult popular science books on biology-related topics for those who like to be intellectually challenged. My previous claim to fame was inventing the word "orthorexia nervosa."
I grew up as something of a child prodigy under the false belief that I was talented in mathematics. After graduating with a math degree, I returned to college to do pre-med and go to medical school (to make a living). It was then that began to notice that I loved biology; but I thought nothing of it. Now, retired, after raising a family, I seem to have at last found my way to doing what I love.
I grew up as something of a child prodigy under the false belief that I was talented in mathematics. After graduating with a math degree, I returned to college to do pre-med and go to medical school (to make a living). It was then that began to notice that I loved biology; but I thought nothing of it. Now, retired, after raising a family, I seem to have at last found my way to doing what I love.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
January 20, 2022
I'm grateful to have found this book AFTER my own long bout of Orthorexia. I enjoyed that it was written with humor and good nature, but was also highly factual and eye opening to how twisted our dietary views can really get. I saw my former self in some of these stories, and catch myself still in the endless cycle of self punishment for eating a twix bar, but good lord am I GRATEFUL to not still be this person. Seriously a great read for anyone interested in the topic or even just food science/human behaviorism in general!
July 21, 2010
This magazine article should have stayed exactly that ... there isn't a lot of science here for a "doctor" that coined the phrase orthorexic, and certainly not enough here for a book. He may not be a purveyor of snake oil, exactly, but this didn't read like any sort of serious text about what can be a serious condition. Does he know what he's talking about? I guess on some levels, since he lived with the condition himself for years. But mostly I thought him a charlatan, and an opportunist.
November 30, 2021
I know this is an older book, so I expected it to be riddled with some undertones of diet culture, but boy was I unprepared. I don’t think Bratman intended this, but in his breakdown of common wellness diets that can lead to orthorexia, he essentially promotes dieting/attempting to shrink the body as a healthy pursuit and even encourages pursuing some of these diets specifically (he *loves* the Zone diet) “as long as you don’t take it too far.” Given the audience of people likely to pick up this book and the fact that this section was the bulk of the whole thing? It has the same vibe as writing a book for people with alcohol use disorders full of new cocktail recipes and saying “some of these are really great - you should totally try them out but only if you don’t go too nuts”…big yikes. There’s even a chapter where he exclusively talks about how great it would be if there were some way of knowing which diet is best for each individual so we could all just streamline that diet. I understand he himself has a strong orthorexic history, but it really shines through in parts of this book in a way that’s dangerous to his readers.
As a clinician I loved his breakdown of the different fears and desires that may be driving orthorexia manifested as these diets (like finding spirituality in the kitchen, fear of death, desire for complete control, etc.). I’ll absolutely use that knowledge in my practice, but I can’t in good conscience add this to my professional library or recommend it to clients.
As a clinician I loved his breakdown of the different fears and desires that may be driving orthorexia manifested as these diets (like finding spirituality in the kitchen, fear of death, desire for complete control, etc.). I’ll absolutely use that knowledge in my practice, but I can’t in good conscience add this to my professional library or recommend it to clients.
May 25, 2015
I'm struggling with orthorexia myself now, so this book was a little difficult to read, and I didn't necessarily agree with everything Dr. Bratman had to say. I did find it very helpful and educational, though, so I'm glad I read it.
August 17, 2020
Very helpful! Helps you to not only identify an issue with food, but as to why you may have an unhealthy relationship with food in the first place. Dr. Bratman has struggled with Orthorexia himself so it felt more personal to read. He genuinely seems to understand and care for others who are struggling. 10/5 stars.
October 19, 2020
Början av boken var väldigt väldigt bra, definitivt före sin tid. Däremot går han främst igenom en massa konstiga dieter sen i resten av boken. Hade velat läsa en fackbok på ämnet som var mer uppdaterad och ur en svensk kontext.
April 15, 2018
Very interesting to read and well written.
January 11, 2015
A very short book, and quite to the point. Its essential function is to define and the symptoms of orthorexia and go a ways towards relief by abstracting them from the specifics of any given diet. By showing how similar the hold utterly disparate diets (paleo v. raw vegan, for instance) can hold over our psyches, Bratman reveals the tendency for omnivores with too much on their plate and not enough on their mind to go wild developing elaborate eating systems. He doesn't go into any detail in the history or validity of any particular diet, which is fine since that's really not the point. On the other hand, the book would have been more substantial had he delved into the roots of the health food culture in the US (if you're interested in the topic, there are a couple of great chapters on it in Paradox of Plenty), as well as the evolutionary psych underlying cultural eating taboos and elaborate food systems.
But again, the book has a much tighter focus than that; it's a pop-health book, really, and ironically resembles a lot of the health food system tomes it skewers for encouraging immoderation and abetting orthorexia. Bratman's advice is probably very reasonable - while he supports vegetarian diets, the best suggestion he offers in the book is the beer and pizza diet: abandoning the stress of self-flagellation for dietary sins can have health benefits greater than perfect diets, since chronic stress is responsible for so many ills.
Bratman also investigates the converse claims - the miracle cures that fad diets report in order to gain converts. As a practitioner of alternative medicine, he deals in idiosyncrasies and unique cases, on the fringes of scientific understanding where certain therapies or diets might have an effect on one person there's a replicable or particularly well explicable, but nonetheless accomplishes the cure the patient was seeking. There is a great discussion about the placebo effect, in a sense the counterpart to the chronic stress element of fad diets; to some extent, the value of the diet is dependent on how much the placebo effect, as well as the actual health impacts of the diet, of course, outweigh the chronic stress aspect.
But more important to Bratman are the broader social scale impacts of orthorexia. He does a bit of pop-psych analysis of the traits that orthorexics manifest in their diets: the desire for control over a life that often seems overwhelming; the failure to come to terms with the inevitability of death manifested as an obsession with longevity enhancing diets; a rationalization for liberals and feminists to conform to body image norms while publicly rejecting their validity; a simple sense of spiritual import found in food; among others. In each of these cases, diet is inadequate and resolving deeper psychological issues.
Strict diet also encourages people to devote time to food rather than more fulfilling activities and especially to exclude themselves from social situations centered around sharing food their diet excludes. Cutting yourself off from the community encourages obsession and a sense of persecution already common among the counterculture and conspiracy-theory-minded groups prone to orthorexia. Obsession isolation, combined with restrictive diets, lead to some of the most dangerous manifestations of the condition, in which people systematically malnourish themselves to the point of illness or death.
As unflattering as it may be, I sought out and relished the book especially as an opportunity to reflect on the intellectual trap many peers in my community, as well as my employers, fell into: a trap that I managed to avoid through a sense of arrogant dismissal of pseudoscience and a growing awareness of its manifestations throughout the counterculture ideologies my peers and I traded in. My arrogant desire to critique my own worldview and the attendant ideas in depth brought me to a scientific exploration of nutrition that convinced me that almost every diet as a thin scientific underpinning and relies primarily on culture, intuition, and ideology to create its system and on identity group politics defend its intellectual ground. Health-Food Junkies is basically a cliff notes version of that process.
But again, the book has a much tighter focus than that; it's a pop-health book, really, and ironically resembles a lot of the health food system tomes it skewers for encouraging immoderation and abetting orthorexia. Bratman's advice is probably very reasonable - while he supports vegetarian diets, the best suggestion he offers in the book is the beer and pizza diet: abandoning the stress of self-flagellation for dietary sins can have health benefits greater than perfect diets, since chronic stress is responsible for so many ills.
Bratman also investigates the converse claims - the miracle cures that fad diets report in order to gain converts. As a practitioner of alternative medicine, he deals in idiosyncrasies and unique cases, on the fringes of scientific understanding where certain therapies or diets might have an effect on one person there's a replicable or particularly well explicable, but nonetheless accomplishes the cure the patient was seeking. There is a great discussion about the placebo effect, in a sense the counterpart to the chronic stress element of fad diets; to some extent, the value of the diet is dependent on how much the placebo effect, as well as the actual health impacts of the diet, of course, outweigh the chronic stress aspect.
But more important to Bratman are the broader social scale impacts of orthorexia. He does a bit of pop-psych analysis of the traits that orthorexics manifest in their diets: the desire for control over a life that often seems overwhelming; the failure to come to terms with the inevitability of death manifested as an obsession with longevity enhancing diets; a rationalization for liberals and feminists to conform to body image norms while publicly rejecting their validity; a simple sense of spiritual import found in food; among others. In each of these cases, diet is inadequate and resolving deeper psychological issues.
Strict diet also encourages people to devote time to food rather than more fulfilling activities and especially to exclude themselves from social situations centered around sharing food their diet excludes. Cutting yourself off from the community encourages obsession and a sense of persecution already common among the counterculture and conspiracy-theory-minded groups prone to orthorexia. Obsession isolation, combined with restrictive diets, lead to some of the most dangerous manifestations of the condition, in which people systematically malnourish themselves to the point of illness or death.
As unflattering as it may be, I sought out and relished the book especially as an opportunity to reflect on the intellectual trap many peers in my community, as well as my employers, fell into: a trap that I managed to avoid through a sense of arrogant dismissal of pseudoscience and a growing awareness of its manifestations throughout the counterculture ideologies my peers and I traded in. My arrogant desire to critique my own worldview and the attendant ideas in depth brought me to a scientific exploration of nutrition that convinced me that almost every diet as a thin scientific underpinning and relies primarily on culture, intuition, and ideology to create its system and on identity group politics defend its intellectual ground. Health-Food Junkies is basically a cliff notes version of that process.
September 12, 2016
Useful book: I liked the vignettes. One story stuck with me - the little boy whose macrobiotic dad restricted his water intake and Bratman had to call CPS. Not all the popular fad diets can be true at the same time. People want to feel they can control their health outcomes by rigorous diet control. It would be great if we could cure cancer by the raw food diet (lots of fruit, no cooking) or by a macrobiotic diet (all cooked, minimal fruit), or avoid it by eating all 'organic', but no such luck. In additional, some people equate food purity with spiritual purity. Be aware of the control issues/ OCD tendencies. Life is life. You are part of the interwoven web. Relax.
Not in this book, but a related thought - To paraphrase Jesus, 'What comes out of our mouth makes us pure or impure - our words and deeds. What we put in our mouth just passes through the digestive system.'
Matthew 15: New International Version (NIV)
10 After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. 11 It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man...........
17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person;.......
Not in this book, but a related thought - To paraphrase Jesus, 'What comes out of our mouth makes us pure or impure - our words and deeds. What we put in our mouth just passes through the digestive system.'
Matthew 15: New International Version (NIV)
10 After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. 11 It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man...........
17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person;.......
December 29, 2009
Well, I saw a story about orthorexia on 20/20 a while back. The story was all about people who were dying because they ate so pure and healthy that they didn't get proper nutrients such as candy, chocolate, butter, and bacon. Well, the book was not even about those people! It was just about people being obsessed with healthy eating.
I never thought about it too much, but yes, people that eat super healthy can be annoying and self-righteous. Every once in a while I get on a kick about eating healthy. So, if I crossed your path during one of those times, I'm sorry! However, if you do not recycle and I have given you crap about that...I am not apologizing. Just do it, ok?!
The focus of the book was on the all-consuming thoughts that can overtake your life and actually isolate you because you can't go and enjoy yourself. Eating healthy is not bad. Being obsessed with eating healthy is bad. And spending hours a day planning things to eat is not good either.
I got sort of worried about orthorexia. I worried that I might have it. So, to prove to myself that I was normal I did an experiment. I tried to eat only chocolates for lunch one day. I did it!!! I'm ok!!!!!! I needed to verify my results, so for dinner one night I ate only cookies.
I never thought about it too much, but yes, people that eat super healthy can be annoying and self-righteous. Every once in a while I get on a kick about eating healthy. So, if I crossed your path during one of those times, I'm sorry! However, if you do not recycle and I have given you crap about that...I am not apologizing. Just do it, ok?!
The focus of the book was on the all-consuming thoughts that can overtake your life and actually isolate you because you can't go and enjoy yourself. Eating healthy is not bad. Being obsessed with eating healthy is bad. And spending hours a day planning things to eat is not good either.
I got sort of worried about orthorexia. I worried that I might have it. So, to prove to myself that I was normal I did an experiment. I tried to eat only chocolates for lunch one day. I did it!!! I'm ok!!!!!! I needed to verify my results, so for dinner one night I ate only cookies.
August 3, 2015
An interesting and insightful look into the world of extreme dietary habits. Not all are "diets" in the popular sense, as motivations are often more spiritual or moral than physical or vain, but there is a fine line between dietary restriction and a disorder. Resembling a mix of eating disorders, addiction and OCD (or other mental illness), orthorexia is a unique affliction. Bratman provides an overview and analysis of the most prevalent extreme diets and offers advice on recognizing when following one veers into dangerous territory.
June 23, 2016
I didn't read the book in entirety, just parts. this book would be great for someone looking for answers for what they're going through. If you're looking to confirm or deny whether your healthy eating habits are overly obsessive bordering dangerous, this book might help you. The author offers many various diets his patients have followed, which I think could be detrimental to someone who may be already following an extreme or restrictive diet. The book doesn't offer much on recovery, besides urging the necessity to seek help.
June 1, 2009
There is an argument for and against everything you can possibly put in your mouth. If you tend toward the obsessive and or compulsive, this could be a problem for you. This book gives a brief description of many diets that, for certain people, can become unhealthy and proposes how to follow them with moderation.
May 11, 2010
This is a very insightful book to peruse if any of your family members or has ever had a health food obsession. It certainly makes me feel a whole lot better as I chug my morning coffee and feast on all manner of plant and beasties.
November 19, 2013
There are people that are so sanctimonious about their diet, they truly believe that they are better than the rest of us.
This book talks about those people, and goes further to study those that are actually have an illness that can be treated.
This book talks about those people, and goes further to study those that are actually have an illness that can be treated.
Read
May 22, 2012very informational.
May 2, 2015
A very insightful book about people who take their healthful eating to unhealthy extremes. Includes the author's own struggles and insights into his own decade-plus obsession.
December 1, 2015
Great book for our day and age with all the fads and beliefs that nutrition is the only thing that impacts physical health.
Read
January 16, 2016Very informative!
November 13, 2023
An interesting read but still laced with diet culture, bleh.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews