Obsession with 'Pure' Food Leads to Eating Disorder

[The Straight Story]

Can too much of a good thing actually be harmful?

When it comes to eating healthy foods, the answer may be yes.

We are all encouraged to follow a healthy diet, but some people take it too far, limiting their diets to food that they consider to be pure to the exclusion of everything else. Some of them end up with orthorexia, a severe eating disorder.

Kristie Rutzel, a Richmond, Va., woman in her mid-20s, said she nearly died because of her obsession with healthy food.

Rutzel became a vegetarian, and then a vegan, she said. Then she adopted a raw food diet.

"I stayed away from restaurants," she told "Good Morning America." "It took me, maybe two or three hours for me to figure out what my next meal was going to be."

Woman Lost Half Her Body Weight

She said she started out at 120 pounds, and dropped 60 pounds because of her rigid diet.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/orthorexia-obsession-healthy-foods-leads-eating-disorder/story?id=10173614

[CBGLuthier]

1. Raw Food because 5,000 years of civilization must be wrong.

stupidest fad ever.

[trotsky]

3. +1000 n/t

[Tailormyst]

10. it's the obsession, it's a mental disorder.

I feel badly for the poor woman and her family.

[The_Commonist]

17. A raw food diet is fine for you...

...if you do it right.
This woman did not do it right.

[Hannah Bell]

2. obsessing over food is stupid. the function of culture is to create a reasonably healthy diet

so we don't all have to recreate it obsessively as individuals according to our fabulous individual "choice".

another area where capitalism creates idiotic "choices" that can be leveraged into profits.

[Tailormyst]

11. It's a mental disorder

They can't help obsessing and really do need treatment. It's like really bad OCD.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. While this is an extreme form of dieting, there is some validity to

aversion to certain foods. Unless you have certified organic, you find hormones and antibiotics in eggs, poultry, and meat in any given supermarket. And organic can cost more than 50% more than conventional fare. You have GM corn that is part of the feed for poultry that you ingest with the next roast chicken dinner you enjoy. Even tofu is made with GM soy.

I reiterate, the ABC News example is extreme, but a "healthy/pure" diet these days is a challenge.

[Statistical]

9. Hormones are not allowed in chicken, pork, turkeys, eggs, or other fowl

Cattle & Sheep unfortunately are still allowed to use artificial hormones.

If you notice a package of chicken says "No hormones added". In tiny print you will see "FDA regulations prohibits use of hormones". This is because FDA found packaging was misleading consumers into thinking one brand was special when in fact all were complying with same regulations.

Still I love me some organic milk. No need to worry about antibiotics or hormones. Added bonus is lasts forever. This likely means the "fresh" non-organic milk in the store is weeks old.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

14. Intreesting. Thanks for this information. We eat a lot of chicken and turkey.

Is there any red meat where hormones are not allowed... or should I just keep an eye out for organic beef?

[Statistical]

18. Unfortunately not as far as I know.

Beef lobby is pretty powerful and they have been able to convince FDA that hormones in beef is "safe" which is strange because FDA thinks hormones in chicken is dangerous.

Bad news is I can't afford organic beef. We eat a lot of chicken and my wife has been replacing ground beef with ground turkey. Still I do love a nice steak or burgers on the grill in the summer.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

22. I got most of my red meat from deer over this past winter.

Not as tasty as meat but it does good in chili or tacos/fajitas. Anything that has alot of seasoning/ingredients.
I can't figure how to make a deer steak taste even like a mediocre beef steak. But it's very cheap, lean, and natural.
I'll have to try a good overnight marinade... :shrug:

[Lance_Boyle]

30. Maybe goat?

But the regs probably cover all ruminants under one law, which would put goat up there with beef, lamb and mutton. Still, it's not a very popular meat in the US (nor is mutton) so odds of finding non-megafarmed goat are better than finding non-megafarmed beef.

[jmowreader]

19. If you go to a big enough store, the "fresh" milk is NOT "weeks" old

There are two basic kinds of milk in your local supermarket: commodity milk and premium milk. Premium milks include organic and lactose-free; commodity milk is the stuff in the gallon jugs that there's a shitload of in the cooler. I work in a fairly good-size supermarket--not the biggest in Fayettenam, but not tiny either--and I go through about eight skids of gallon-size milk per day: two Vitamin D, three 2 percent and one each of 1 percent and Fat Free. (There are 216 gallons of milk on a skid.) On Friday I sell more than that. The Walmarts in town are probably selling twelve to fifteen a day. I get milk four times per week, and the dairy ships it within a day of its being milked...so, at most, you're looking at it taking four days for the milk to go from being in the cow to being in your refrigerator. I cannot stock milk for "weeks" at a time, nor can the dairy hold it for "weeks" at a time--because there's not enough room in either my facility or theirs to do so.

At the other end of the scale is the premium milk. Recommendation for you: if you believe in organic milk, find a local organic farmer because the national organic companies are into Big Agribusiness as much as any other producer.

[Statistical]

20. Then what makes organic milk last longer.

Reason I started buying organic milk is it doesn't spoil. Or at least it never spoils in the time it takes for us to drink it.

I buy regular gallon of "commodity milk" as you describe and half the time I end up pouring some of it down the drain.

Now I buy 2 1/2 gallon containers of organic milk (yeah from one of the big companies) and it never spoils. In last 2 years I have never thrown any milk out.

Only thing I could think of is the organic milk is getting to the store faster thus they are spoiling in same amount of time just the "commodity milk" started the clock earlier?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

21. The container plays a part in it.

A container like cardboard that blocks light (especially UV) goes a long way to keeping food from spoiling.

[jmowreader]

24. A BIG part of it is you're buying the cheap milk in plastic gallon jugs

The plastic jugs we have on the East Coast are slightly translucent and whitish, which allows light to reach the milk. Light hastens milk spoilage. There at least USED to be a yellow plastic for milk jugs, but consumers don't like it--they can't associate milky goodness with this yellow thing in the fridge.

Also, there's more surface area for air to contact the milk in a gallon jug--probably why all premium milk comes in a cardboard half gallon. No light can reach the milk and less surface area for oxygen to interact with the milk. (Some of the premium milk companies sell their milk by the gallon, but there are two half-gallon cartons in there.)

And don't quote me on this, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out the premium-milk people filled the carton with nitrogen before they put the milk in so the milk came to you with no air above it.

In actuality the premium milk takes longer to get to your doorstep than the commodity stuff, because the premium producers have fewer plants.

[Mass]

5. Stupid article. The person has some mental health issues. This is what obsession is about.

Same thing as addiction to gambling, ...

It has nothing to do with eating good food and a lot to do with our culture of all or nothing.

[Happyhippychick]

8. I agree. This is a sensationalized story, the woman has an eating disorder, pure food didn't causeit

[Tailormyst]

13. I agree. This woman needs serious treatment.

If it wasn't food it would be something else.

[notadmblnd]

6. Anything in excess has the potential for abuse

even the things that are good for us.

[get the red out]

7. Eating disorders will find an outlet

The mental illness of Anorexia will find an outlet, whether it is to starve through no food being pure enough, or to starve through having an idea that you can't eat over 300 calories a day without getting fat. It is all just the avenue that the anorexia takes. I have known over-weight vegetarians and an anorexic meat consumer (when she consumed anything at all), and everything in between. Anorexia is really the illness.

[Odin2005]

16. This sounds like OCD and/or OC Personality Disorder more than anything.

[get the red out]

23. Logical

I knew someone who was a very bad anorexic and she was obsessed with limiting her food. You are right, obsession.

[marmar]

12. So she weighed 60 lbs? Yikes......

nt

[Odin2005]

15. We are adapted to eat cooked food. "Faw-Foodism" is insane and dangerous.

It leads to malnutrition and digestive disturbances. And in this woman's case, death.

This nonsense strikes me as socially-tolerated Obsessive-Compulsiveness, like a lot of health food fads.

[Codeine]

28. We've probably only been cooking for about 250,000 years

so it's unlikely we've had any real physical adaptation that requires it.

OTOH, it certainly makes many substances far more digestible, so it's a net biological benefit and highly recommended.

[Odin2005]

29. According to this book we have been cooking for 2 million years.

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

[Codeine]

33. Almost nobody agrees with Wrangham.

He's wayyyy outside the general consensus on the subject. Archeological evidence seems to point at the quarter-million-year figure.

[LeftyMom]

25. Anorexics make excuses up not to eat. News at 11.

[Fleshdancer]

32. +1

and once again, the media focuses on the least important part of the story.

[pitohui]

26. yah i think some women do this as cover for anorexia

it's a socially acceptable way to cover up their eating disorder, they don't have to eat in public if they can say they're vegetarian/vegan and they can't be sure that what you're serving or what the restaurant is serving is "pure" enough

when i was more into bulimia i would still eat stuff but then throw it up, like THAT'S healthy? all kinds of stomach acid coming up to rot your teeth and esophagus???

people who can only eat the purest of raw foods can't travel, can't eat at the work place or at social events, and so on, it's a crippling handicap to be on a restricted diet, and when women "voluntarily" restrict in that way...i can't help but wonder

sometimes it's obvious from their bodies/appearance that they have anorexia

on the internet, i can say, GET HELP, but in person i'm too shy and i figure it won't do any good anyway, they KNOW they have a problem, but just like the addict, if they don't want it enough to seek help i can't get help for them

[Codeine]

27. Oh, for fuck's sake.

Being a vegan/vegetarian is not orthorexia, or anything like it. This woman has a mental illness.

[MrScorpio]

31. I'm assuming that a psychological disorder was the underlying cause of her obsession

She was in need of some kind of counseling