Certainly, a growing number of super-health-conscious people in the UK seem to think so, as they nibble through life on increasingly abstemious and restricted diets in a quest to achieve optimum health and ward off illness.
A balanced healthy diet is clearly a good thing, but many experts believe that widespread obsession with the nutritional quality of food — be it unprocessed, organically grown, GM-free or linked into a diet to reduce allergies — is a growing problem in our information-rich society. Many nutritionists are reporting a marked increase in the number of patients coming to them with a virtual phobia of unhealthy foods.
The repercussions are potentially dire. Not only can a desire to eat the perfect healthy diet become such an overwhelming obsession that people make themselves ill with worry. But cutting out “harmful” food, such as meat or dairy, often leads to a lack of crucial nutrients, putting children at risk of poor growth and the entire family at risk of a debilitating illness, such as osteoporosis. In the most extreme cases, the obsession can trigger an eating disorder.
The problem has become very widespread and the condition has now been dubbed “orthorexia nervosa” by worried nutritionists.
Dr Steven Bratman, co-author of Health Food Junkies — Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating, describes obsessive healthy eating as “a disease disguised as a virtue”. He says: “For many people eating ‘correctly’ has become a harmful obsession — one that causes them to adopt progressively rigid diets that not only eliminate crucial nutrients and food groups, but ultimately cost them their overall health, personal relationships and emotional wellbeing.”
Steve Bloomfield, from the Eating Disorders Association, agrees: “Something that starts as a desire to eat well can grow into a full-blown eating disorder where sufferers show all the same obsessive-compulsive characteristics as people suffering from bulimia or anorexia nervosa.”
Many people also become their own doctor, believing they can treat their health problems through diet. They read a generic article about food allergies, watch half a documentary and perhaps see an alternative therapist. On the basis of this largely unreliable diagnosis they decide which foods they are allergic to, and never touch them again. Wheat, dairy, white processed food, soya, fish/shellfish and eggs are usually the first to be eliminated.
Only 2 per cent of the population are allergic to wheat or dairy, yet experts say that a staggering proportion of people think they are, and change their diet accordingly.
“The increasing emphasis on eating healthy and organic foods gives people another reason to restrict their diets and more vulnerable people can quickly develop an obsessive-compulsive tendency to negate groups of foods that are not wholly pure or health enhancing,” says Vicki Edgson, a nutritionist and naturopath and co-author of The Food Doctor: Healing Foods for Mind and Body. “Most of the people who become obsessive about food are subconsciously concerned about their body image and are using healthy eating as a cover to avoid fattening food.”
Few nutritionists are ready to brand our new-found food obsession an eating disorder but most are worried about the trend.
“It’s hard for people not to become concerned,” says Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue, and Susie Orbach on Eating. “Industrial production produces dreadful food and many people live on fairly unhealthy diets. So they read around the subject and take control of the situation by excluding food groups. Imposing a set of limits makes people feel safer.”
The problem becomes even more serious when people start restricting their children’s diet as well.
“Parents who are uptight and obsessive about food can easily pass this negative relationship on to their children, which can be very harmful,” says Orbach. “Not only can it affect their relationship with food for life, but it can seriously damage their long term health.”
Paul Sacher, specialist dietician at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, agrees. “Parents are desperate to prevent their children from becoming obese,” he says.
“They are also worried about allergies because they are more common among children now. But it is too easy to start obsessing about feeding the family properly. Many parents eliminate what they perceive to be harmful foods, but don’t bother to replace them with alternative sources of nutrients. This can be very harmful for children, putting them at risk of malnutrition, anaemia and even osteoporosis later in life. People must remember that only a small percentage of children are genuinely allergic.”
Experts are already predicting an osteoporosis explosion in the UK because children take so little exercise and rarely eat calcium rich foods — a killer combination for the skeleton.
“People also overdose on vitamin supplements, scooping up a whole handful every day and exceeding the recommended dose,” says Sacher. “Over time this can build up to toxic levels, which will damage the kidneys and liver.”
Not only can eliminating food groups wreak havoc, but the sheer stress involved in eating perfectly healthy food all the time can make people ill, causing anything from gastric upsets and headaches to IBS and inflamed skin conditions. People try to treat their symptoms with a healthier diet, become more stressed when they don’t feel better, which in turn causes their symptoms to become even worse — a vicious circle it can be difficult to break.
Health Food Junkies — Orthorexia Nervosa: Overcoming the Obsession with Healthful Eating by Dr Steve Bratman and David Knight, US titles are available from www.amazon.co.uk
The Food Doctor: Healing Foods for Mind and Body by Vicki Edgson and Ian Marber, Collins and Brown, £14.99.
Susie Orbach on Eating, by Susie Orbach, Penguin Books, £4.99. Eating Disorders Association, helpline 0845 634 1414
