If you search for #healthyfood on Instagram, you will find approximately 28,172,638 posts. Other popular hashtags include: healthsnack, healthyvegan, and healthyrecipes.
Here’s what many of the posts look like:
Another popular hashtag is healthychoices. This one is more than just about diet, and features posts that are about fitness at large.
The number of posts that fall under this category: 14,775,749.
From gym memberships on the rise, to a surge of healthy food joints, to cold pressed juices replacing colas, and organic food becoming staple for many, we are clearly a health-obsessed generation.
But, could we have become a bit too obsessed?
The concept of diets has been around as long as fitness has been a way of life. But, in recent years, healthy eating has taken over in an unprecedented way. Thanks to many health enthusiasts Instagramming their bite-sized, green diets, eating clean has become an obsession for many. In fact, it may have become more than that. It’s a statement, a status symbol, and a way of living, even if it comes with a price.
Wait, what? A price for healthy eating?
Yes, there is a price for healthy eating and it is called Orthorexia Nervosa. In simple terms, orthorexia nervosa is unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Many people who follow “healthy diets” are ending up at the doctors’ clinic due to malnutrition, deficiencies, and (brace yourselves) anxiety!
Orthorexia Nervosa is a psychological disorder which impairs one’s relationship with food. Anything that doesn’t fit with one’s definition of clean eating is dismissed (even if it may be nutritious, and necessary), and one almost begins to build their life around eating certain types of food. This eating disorder effects one’s diet, as well as one’s mind.
Physical or dietary symptoms include:
Being fixated on the “ideal” diet, instead of healthy weight
Thinking too much about the relationship between food and health problems such as asthma, diabetes, and digestive problems
Completely rejecting foods that contain artificial sugars, preservatives or flavours
Not eating fat, sugar, or salt, even if it may be healthy
Consuming a significantly small number of foods (sometimes, as low as 10 or under) because those are the only food items that are considered healthy
Consuming too many supplements
Psychological symptoms include:
Feeling guilty when they are not able to stick to the diet
Spending too much time planning and preparing meals
Feeling spiritually uplifted, or more confident after eating the “right” food
Judgement of those who do not follow clean eating
Withdrawing from friends and family who disagree with their diet
Mood swings, anxiety, and depression
There is no doubt that healthy eating is good for you, and should be adhered to more often than not. But, many times, we mistakenly reject good sugars, and fats, and animal proteins, in favour of “clean eating.” The key is to have a balanced diet. But, clean eating taken to far can compromise on that. This is when healthy eating becomes a problem (and yes, many cases of Orthorexia Nervosa are coming up these days), and needs to be addressed. It is no longer about being healthy, but about an unhealthy way of coping with underlying anxiety.
