Health Food Junkies

Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa by Steven Bratman

For a long time I've recognized that people can get pretty fanatical about diet. In fact, people can get so fanatical about eating healthy that it becomes unhealthy.  Health is about balance in our lives and part of that balance is being happy and maintaining healthy relationships.  That's why I was so pleased when I discovered this book Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa by Steven Bratman, M.D.

Dr. Bratman is very qualified to write this book, since he was a health food junkie at one time himself.  He explains the problems with various strict "health" diets like raw foods, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, blood type diet and the zone diet and why these dietary philosophies become obsessions.  And, that's the real problem here.  It's not that there is anything wrong per se with finding a healthier diet—it's when that diet becomes an obsession that's a problem.

My own observations are that people need to learn to listen to their body in order to eat healthy.  You can't just eat according to some philosophy that makes sense to your brain. I've observed many times that people who think they are eating healthy are showing obvious signs that their diet is not generating the health they really want, but they are so convinced that their diet is "healthy" that they refuse to entertain other possibilities.

I highly recommend Health Food Junkies: Orthorexia Nervosa as a sensible approach to getting over an unhealthy obsession with food.  Dr. Bratman is not opposed to eating healthy.  He uses changes in diet to help people to heal, and so do I.  But, we both agree that when healthy eating becomes an obsesion that takes our life out of balance in other ways, it is a serious problem.