An eating disorder is a mental illness that destroys someone from the inside out.  Eating disorders do not discriminate; it will affect any age and gender. When people become affected by an eating disorder it becomes an obsession, a fixation, in their life that slowly isolates them from everything they find joy in. Eating becomes a burden instead of a joy, a time of distress instead of a time to unwind, the pink elephant in the victim's life. Whether victims struggle with bulimia, anorexia, or other disorders, they all become slaves to the distorted thoughts of their brains. With every mental illness there is a trigger and for some eating disorders, it can be the fixation on healthy foods. Although not a clinical disorder yet, Orthorexia affects many people. Orthorexics become obsessed with eating pure and healthy diets to the point of suffering from malnutrition.  Personally, I know that becoming obsessed with healthy eating can happen and it will slowly become a detrimental issue to your overall health. I am qualified to write about the seriousness of this disorder because I experienced a mid version of this ED my sophomore year of high school and can attest to the time it takes to change your mental outlooks on eating after you recognize you have an issue with eating. Even if someone thinks they are just being "healthy," they can end up restricting their diet to the extent that they begin to suffer.

Progressively throughout the years, Orthorexia has been gaining popularity in the amount of victims it affects. In an article written by Laura Donovan, "The Dark Side of Eating Clean", it discusses the influence social media has on eating disorders. Hashtags such as #cleaneating and #thinspo, are perpetuating negative body images and eating disorders. Donovan is biased because she supports the existence of Orthorexia and promotes the awareness of the ED. Jordan Younger, a food blogger, found "The obsession with my diet took up every waking hour" (Donovan). Instead of eating choices being a natural instinct, social media began to guide Younger. Social media plays such an influence in the millennial generation's lives and this articles talks about how the obsession with being healthy is still an unhealthy obsession. These articles are from Attn, a website that has a mission to empower and make an impact of the current generation. Due to the mission, there is definitely a bias when talking about the authority of social media in eating disorders. As readers can see, social media can be both helpful and detrimental to your body image. (I combined articles I found like suggested in my feedback)

 Orthorexia can go undiagnosed because most people just think the person is being healthy, and not that there is an underlying eating disorder.  Even though Orthorexia may not be a clinical diagnosis in the DSM-5, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, however, it is a disorder that should be taken seriously. The article written by NEDA, National Eating Disorder Association, discusses all the questions pertaining to what orthorexia is.  In technical terms it is, "the fixation on righteous eating" (Kratina).  Unlike Anorexia and Bulimia, Orthorexia is when patients will obsess over healthy eating, not on losing weight and/or thinness. Similar to recognized eating disorders, this eating disorder will result in malnutrition and weight loss just like the other eating disorders. Overall, this article points out that today, social issues are more prominent than the nutritional issues due to the use of social in today's normal day-to-day lives. 

Another important issue that goes along with Orthorexia is nutritional fads. These trends have been very prominent in social media such as instagram and pinterest. There always seems to be a new "super food" being discovered and a new diet to follow today. Now there have been many "healthy" diet trends being popularized. Due to the current movement of healthy eating sweeping across America, the obsession with meal planning and accessing the purity of foo, orthorexic individuals are almost being prompted to obsess over food health. In orthorexics' lives food consumes almost all the time they have and leaves little room for anything else in their lives. Like everything in life, moderation is key. No obsession is a healthy one. Using the National Eating Disorders website for information on EDs is very reliable because it is a medical website and provides a science standpoint of the newly named disorder. Having a medical perspective enables the researchers to look at the issue from a point of view that doesn't look at the outside causes of the disorder but rather defines what the disorder is.  

A point that I will discuss in my final research paper is the opposition. This is the group of people that believe orthorexia is just a label that corporations are trying to use to explain the healthy food trend harming their businesses.  If we look at the disorder from this standpoint it will strengthen the reason for awareness on orthorexia. Author Jefferey Jaxen argues that orthorexia is another way the psychiatric community can make a drug to treat a disorder. The article "Officials Declare 'Eating Healthy' a Mental Disorder" is completely against the movement to validate Orthorexia as a eating disorder. Instead of viewing it as an obsession like other eating disorders, Jaxen feels it is, " an attempt to curb the mass rush for food change and reform" and diagnose healthy eating as a disorder. Due to much of our society's food industry being heavily reliant on the fast food and junk food, it is a concern of the author that orthorexia is just a way for an industry to make money on people who are straying away from the norm of food consumption. 

I would like to focus on the the notion that the psychiatric community has deemed creativity as a mental illness also. I think it could possibly help my argument. It demonstrates people tend to define what is "different" as a disorder. It is clear that the author of this article has a biased point of view on the issue. Readers questions whether his reasoning on the issue is valid because it is very one-sided.  It would provide an even deeper understanding as to what drives his overall argument if readers knew what the eating habits of the author are. When reading the article, there is a very condescending tone that denies the existence of orthorexia. It is questionable to whether or not the author possibly suffers from an obsession with healthy eating himself. If he does it could help explain why he is in denial that orthorexia is an eating disorder. I would like to point out that Anorexia was named 80 years before it was accepted as an eating disorder in the DSM-5. 

The question of whether or not orthorexia is as serious as anorexia or other eating disorders is very debatable to people. The health conscious community seems to be against the idea. People who identify with eating pure do not see the issue with being "too healthy" as easily as people who are not fully invested in the "pure life".  While Doctors appear to be more accepting to the disorder because they look at the issue from a medical perspective, it is important to remember that orthorexia is not saying eating healthy is a disorder, it is saying that obsessively eating healthy is an issue. From reading the articles, many sides can be represented and supported. However, my stance is that Orthorexia should be classified as a classified clinical eating disorder. This disorder can and will still harm people if it is not treated. My working thesis for my essay is, Orthorexia nervosa is changing the way eating disorders are being defined and is expanding the knowledge about the harmful effects of fad dieting on one's mental because patients obsess over the quality of their food rather than their personal weight or thinness.

 
