 Orthorexia nervosa is an unrecognized eating disorder, in which the person becomes obsessed with eating healthy foods. Whereas, recognized eating disorders like anorexia deal with the quantity of food, orthorexics care about the quality of their food. Many researchers have raised questions about the validity of orthorexia as an entity, but I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. A medical case report was published on orthorexia in a critical care journal about eating disorder emergencies. Okay, I'm listening. So they like talking about cases of bona fide eating disorders like this woman with anorexia collapsing after self-induced vomiting and laxatives after years of throat and rectal bleeding. I mean, that is indeed a tragic eating disorder emergency. Okay, so what's their orthorexic case like? A 53-year-old man who had triple bypass two years ago comes in for a checkup. His physician recommends seeing a dietitian since his BMI is down to like 18.5, which is right on the cut-off for being underweight. He's evidently been eating so healthy he's lost a significant amount of weight. He states that since his diagnosis of coronary heart disease and high cholesterol, he only eats natural and organic foods. Therefore, he probably has a psychiatric illness. He clearly is preoccupied with food and judges others based on their food choices, when, in fact, he may very well have been saving his own life. I mean, to me, the craziest thing this guy did was get a triple bypass. I mean, imagine lying on a psychiatrist's couch and being like, yeah, you know, I could switch to bean burritos, but you know, I'd rather pay someone to slice my chest open with a knife, maybe saw my breastbone in half, put me at risk for stroking out, you know, instead of dealing with the underlying cause. What do you think, Doc? Then we could see some orthorexics becoming evangelical as they share their feelings of disgust or disappointment towards their family, friends or even children for their quote-unquote normal food choices. I mean, it's bad enough they care about their own health, but caring about their family and friends, their children off to the funny form you go. I mean, it's not like, you know, what we eat is the number one cause of death in the United States or anything, killing hundreds of thousands more Americans every year than cigarettes. Oh, wait, it is! And also the number one cause of disability, but you may have a mental illness if you're disappointed that your kids are eating multicolored marshmallows for breakfast. If you recognize these warning signs, what should you do? You should confront the person. I know it's not easy, but if you see someone obsessively trying to avoid unhealthy foods and worse, trying to get others to do the same, then confront them. The possibility of helping save their own life far outweighs uncomfortable emotions. The irony, of course, is that they're trying to save your life, right? Imagine if you were able to talk Mr. Triple Bypass out of his healthy eating obsession. You'd probably kill him. To his credit, even Stephen Bratman, the guy who coined the term orthorexia, has backed off, saying that he never intended to propose a new eating disorder. As an alternative medicine practitioner, he just wanted his patients to relax their dietary corset and live a little. I mean, where did people get this idea that he was trying to coin the name for a novel eating disorder? I mean, if you go back to his original article, he just said he was trying to coin the name for a novel eating disorder. In eating disorder, he saved himself from the doom of his eternal health food addiction with the help of taco's pizza and a milkshake. One of the directors of the Yale Center for Eating Disorders is skeptical. We've never had anybody come into our clinic with orthorexia and have been working in this field for at least 20 years. Without research to back his theory, Bratman is simply another guy trying to make a buck off the health-conscious public. They invent some new term, a new diet, a solution to a problem that doesn't even exist. The burden should fall to the authors to prove what they're saying is correct before they start unleashing advice on the public.