Orthorexia: an essay on 'righteous eating'

Orthorexia is a term used by Steven Bratman. Orthorexia is referred to, as a mental disorder. The term is used to describe people who have become obsessed with “Righteous eating”. It is called righteous eating because; it Is the food that many people believe is healthy. But orthorexics are too extreme, and that makes this kind of eating very unhealthy for the human body.

We recently read a text about orthorexia in class. In the text we heard a story about a teenage girl. She was about 15 years old, and she was an orthorexic. Her orthorexia started very harmlessly, the girl wanted to go on a diet, and cut down on some of the unhealthy food. At first she became a vegetarian, which means she only had to stop eating meat. This harmless change quickly turned into more. She now became a vegan, which means she now had to cut off any food product made from animals. But that was not enough; the girl now cut sugar, salt and any processed wheat, out of her diet. The article says that the girl ended up living on basically popcorn and cranberry juice, which any sensible human knows is very unhealthy. She kept losing weight, and this had big effects on her body. She was sick a lot more than usually, and most days she was drained by energy.