Clean Plate

Is orthorexia—an unhealthy obsession with healthy food— the eating disorder for the digital age? asks Jancee Dunn.

AFTER EMILY FONNESBECK HAD her first child, she was eager to get her body back. As a registered dietitian, she knew what she had to do: She started with at least an hour of cardio six days a week, and cut out processed foods. (Gluten, dairy, and sugar soon followed.)

The weight slipped off. But Fonnesbeck, a 36-year-old Utah native with a creamy complexion and a chestnut bob, was plagued by fatigue and headaches. “I didn’t see that as a result of overexercise and under-eating,” she says. “I saw it as a sign of ‘inflammation’ from something I was eating. If I could just find the culprit, I would feel better.”

A clean diet was the ideal, and hers would be immaculate. Fonnesbeck eliminated all animal products and nuts, then most fruits, until she was down to a random handful of foods she deemed “pure” enough: purple cabbage, corn tortillas, brown rice, lentils, kale, and tahini.

Her obsession intensified until, while preparing for a vacation, she sat down and informed her husband that she wasn’t going. “I would have needed to pack all of my own food, and it just felt easier to stay home,” she recalls. Her husband, who had grown increasingly worried about her, produced an article on a little-known eating disorder called orthorexia nervosa. Fonnesbeck was flooded with relief. Her behavior not only followed a recognizable pattern, it had a name.