Orthorexia and Picky Eating--the New Eating Disorders?

I suppose I'm an 'adult picky eater'. Part of it is that I have hyper senses; not just taste, but smell, sight and hearing as well. Foods that most people consider bland are quite flavorful to me, and things that normal people consider to be only mildly spicy are horrifically hot to me. Some foods, like pretty much all seafood, I can't stand the smell of, so much that I can't even get it past my nose and into my mouth to even try to taste. Then there are foods that I can't stand the texture of; peas, for example. In addition to all of that, I also have some form of generalized IBS, and there are a lot of foods that, though I may find tasty, will have me spending half the day on the toilet.

I hate going to restaurants with other people, because they always want to go someplace with 'exotic' (re: ultra spicy) food. Even if they have something on the menu that I might be interested in, I have to worry about if I'm going to be able to make it home to my own bathroom in time, or am I going to have to use a public toilet that some asshole pissed all over. That's been a huge problem for me at work and when I was in school as well. Many days, I simply go all day without any food until I get home. Then, some days, I just don't feel like going through all the hassle of preparing something, or there's nothing I can think of to make that I'm not just plain sick and tired of eating, so I just go hungry.

Maybe it is a first-world problem. If I ever got to the point of true, gut-wrenching, starvation-level hunger, I'd probably eat whatever was offered to me. Sometimes, though, I wish food just came in a convenient little pill form, complete with a full day's supply of nutrients. All you have to do is take your pill once a day, and you don't have to worry about preparing food (and cleaning up afterwards), or being stuck using a disgusting public restroom.

i remember when i was younger my cousin would only eat pickles

No, they really won't (and by "they," I mean "society at large," because I don't get where right-wingers come into this over anyone else--being left-leaning doesn't make someone an automatic fan of raw food diets and veganism). They'll continue to dismiss you as a hippie weirdo, and they'll continue to dismiss people who actually might have disordered eating habits that match this theoretical "orthorexia" diagnosis as people whining about nothing or being victimized by a society that wants to label everything a "problem" so that no one will ever have to feel bad feelings and why are we catering to fat people anyway there's nothing wrong with a healthy diet blah blah blah. It won't become a "thing," because our culture overall would much rather spend its time shaming people than treating them when they need it.

As the article mentioned, a main reason mental health professionals spend time trying to come up with new names for various collections of behaviors and symptoms like this is because until there's an official diagnosis for it, that 68-pound chick who only eats broccoli isn't getting her insurance to pay a dime to treat her, and the researchers who want to look further into it aren't going to get much more than that in funding. Even when there is a diagnosis, insurance companies are notoriously terrible about covering treatment for eating disorders only up to the point that you've gained a few pounds back and aren't passing out every time you stand up and then calling it quits. No one's trying to pathologize veganism or raw-foodism or gluten-freeism or paleo-whateverthefuck-ism. They're trying to get a name for patients who come to them saying that their obsession with eating only certain foods is getting in the way of living normal, healthy lives so that more research can be done to improve understanding and treatment of their condition and so that those patients can maybe get the insurance plan they're paying through the nose for to kick in a buck or two to help get that treatment.

No I think the article is weird and didn't tackle this right. Just cause you only eat vegetables, doesn't make a person healthy. This sounds like a smaller section of obsessive compulsive disorder only it's regulated to food. It sounds even MORE like OCD because its treated in the same way.

Honestly if a friend of mine told me she was only eating broccoli and cauliflower, I would start watching to make sure she wasn't anorexic. Limiting your calorie content to something so low is way dangerous.

Being Picky is me, I don't eat beans, I don't eat onions, I don't eat peppers because I hate them and I'm grown and no one can make me anymore. lol I don't dig this article and maybe it just wasn't written well enough.

ANYONE can abuse anything. Food, Pills, Weed, Exercise. Whether it is originally good or bad for you is not the issue, it is the abuse that makes this a problem. In the case of these people, a healthy diet consists of meat, bread, vegatables, fruits and healthy fats NOT only 1 of those items and fixating on said 1 item and only eating it whether you think it's healthy or not is abusing that food. Just like we say people who drink a liter of soda everyday are abusing their bodies by giving it too much caffeine and sugar, you can harm yourself by doing too much of a good thing.

Same goes with weed, I know a bunch of recreational users who are still smart, bright awesome people. I also know a few people who've abused it to the point where they do nothing but sit in their dorm room and smoke... 18 hours a day. It consumes them entirely and they have no life other than marijuana. I would say that's a pretty bad thing and would constitute abuse of a substance. Same goes with booze, pills or whatever your poison may be.

The real disease here is in the persons head, not in what they are doing. Replace "healthy eating" up there with any drug and we'd be like "that person is an addict", just because it's not your normal drug doesn't mean it can't harm them.