I was pretty critical of Scarlett Thomas’s latest book last week. I stand by those criticisms, but it has had an unexpected effect on me. Since finishing the book I’ve been thinking a lot about food obsessions and diets. As well as being the central theme of the book, in reading other reviews I discovered Thomas had admitted to her own eating disorder and an unhealthy relationship with food. In particular, she talked about ‘orthorexia’ - a term not officially recognised as a disorder, but one, which has sparked much debate and research.
A familiar stranger
This term - ‘orthorexia' - intrigued me.
Distinct from other eating disorders, orthorexia is “an unhealthy obsession with otherwise healthy eating”, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. - The Guardian
As I understand it from (admittedly limited) reading, this condition is one where someone becomes intensively focused on the health consequences of what they eat. All those stories you hear on the radio about x causing cancer or y being linked to autoimmune diseases - with orthorexia they can be taken deeply to heart and the person’s diet severely restricted because of it.
Sometimes, it isn’t even all about the restriction. It’s about the mental anguish caused by falling off the bandwagon and eating seemingly sinful food. Thomas writes about this from personal experience:
During a pegan episode, I ended up hungry at a pasta restaurant with a limited menu. After one bowl of pasta and a dessert (well, why not?), I had a terrible panic attack. For countless hours I lay in bed sweating and hardly able to breathe, believing that gluten was attacking my insides, that I would develop an autoimmune disease, schizophrenia and lupus. At other times, I ate meat and fixated on the rotting corpse in my stomach, desperately wanting it out.
I am in no way suggesting I have an eating disorder, or trying to diminish the painful reality of such disorders for those who suffer when I say this but that experience sounded strangely familiar.
The lure of simplified science
It’s hardly a revelation to say there has been a huge boom in the healthy living industry in recent years. ‘Clean eating’, ‘plant-based’, ‘wellness’ - these terms have entered the mainstream and the marketplace. And with those terms come rules, consequences and pseudoscience to strengthen their credibility.
Through the media and through people in my life who follow some of these more restrictive ‘health-focused’ diets, I’ve heard a lot about the risks and rewards of particular food groups. I’ve always considered myself relatively intelligent with a questioning and critical mind. I didn’t accept these ‘facts’ at face value and tried to read more about them. But as much as the logical part of my brain remained balanced, something different was quietly happening in the emotional part of my mind.
I’ve tried traditional diets in the past, although I was always encouraged to focus on health and variety in what I consumed. I’ve done calorie counting and the old British Heart Foundation diet with ‘portions’ of different food groups. More recently though, when I’ve experimented, I’ve noticed I’ve done so through elimination.
Correlation doesn’t half feel like causation
I tried out veganism in 2018. I stuck with it for lent (over 40 days and nights). I was starting from a basic omnivore diet so it was a radical change but I saw it as a challenge - a test of willpower. I didn’t love it, but I did notice my skin clear up. I thought - huh - didn’t I read something about dairy causing spots? Maybe that’s why.
Since then, I’ve switched to oat milk on my morning cereals and vegan cheese as my go-to snack. (I’m not going to give up on the concept of snacking on cheese altogether.)
I’ve done dry months before too. I always lose about half a stone when I do. We all know booze is full of calories and we don’t reduce our meals when we know we’re drinking. I wasn’t doing it for health to start with though - I was doing it for charity, raising money for Macmillan’s Sober October.
But then those news headlines and those whispers about empty calories and dangers to health crept it. I was never a big drinker - I would usually have a glass of wine with dinner. I started to focus on one day a week alcohol free. Now it’s two. And I’ve taken those steps simply because of fear.
Finally, earlier this year I went vegetarian for January. Everyone was talking about the environment, how we all eat more meat than we need, and the dangers associated with processed meat (i.e. cancer). I don’t want to get too detailed here, but I noticed an improvement in my, how shall I say, regularity. Gosh, I thought, maybe it’s true about us not being able to digest meat properly. About it damaging our guts. I really should restrict my consumption more.
The fear factor
Fear of cancer; fear of immune system problems; fear of heart disease; fear of dying earlier than you absolutely have to. It’s an incredibly powerful motivator. And sometimes a necessary one if you genuinely consume too much. We all need to be mindful of our health. But living day-to-day in fear? Making every meal decision based on whether you want to ‘take a risk’? As if a single slice of bacon is the difference between getting cancer and not. That’s a damaging approach.
When I read about ‘orthorexia’ I saw a diluted version of it in my own habits over the last couple of years. I am grateful that it hasn’t reached the point where I am damaging my health (physical or mental) but I could see the echoes of something genuinely unhealthy in how I had started to equate health with restriction and elimination.
There is an article on the National Eating Disorders website by a young man, telling his experience with and recovery from orthorexia. He writes:
Since my recovery from orthorexia, a few crucial lessons have been cemented in my mind: 1) what ultimately makes someone a decent person and enjoyable to be around is not their looks but their character, and 2) food is not just nutrients and energy but also a wonderful way to bring people and communities together.
That second point really resounded with me. I’ve written about how much I love food and cooking. Yet, I was allowing what I consumed to gradually dwindle because of a very single-minded focus about what food was ‘for’. The insidious messages from the multi-billion pound ‘wellness’ industry had hit me with fear rather than reason and had crept in without consent.
Paying attention to balance
To be clear, I’m not suggesting you can’t have an enjoyable and varied vegetarian or vegan diet, for example. It can be a fun cooking challenge in itself. But the point here isn’t about diet - it’s about the motivation behind it.
Going vegetarian because you care about animals, the environment, or even your health to the extent that you feel you can get the nutrition and enjoyment you need without meat is great. But going vegetarian because you are frightened about what meat does and constructing meals with the sole purpose trying to eliminate as many ‘negative’ elements as possible feels like an unhealthy relationship with food.
Eating disorders are a serious category of their own. What I describe in my experiences is not that. But the echoes of it: the damaging mind sets and approaches to food exist much more widely and can cause a lot of worry, upset and distraction.
Balance, enjoyment and learning to let go are crucial, and certainly what I hope to step back towards. But I also think there needs to be balance of facts, balance in messaging and advertising and - like in so many areas of life now - access to more balanced opinion. The West is spiralling into such small circles of attention - I think it would be better for us all to have a little more variety in our diets.