Too Much of a Good Thing

This compulsive obsession with eating only healthy foods, is emerging as a serious mental health concern in urban India

- By TEJ PRAKASH BHARDWAJ

It starts with an innocuous decision to avoid unhealthy or impure food. Soon, you find yourself obsessing over portion sizes, reading labels like a mystery novel, scrutinising ingredients, scheduling meal preps, and giving up meat and dairy in pursuit of “clean eating”.

What begins as mindful eating quickly spirals into an unhealthy fixation with purity and control.

When Akash Singh joined a gym to lose weight and get fit, he became increasingly conscious of what was on his plate. Loading up on protein and sourcing only ‘pure’ food soon became a serious business. Before long, the 32-year-old IT professional found himself anxious about every meal. “I became extremely conscious of my diet. I would spend hours preparing meals and endlessly scroll through Instagram trying to figure out what was actually healthy and how food was being sourced,” he says.

This obsession with eating healthy soon began affecting Singh’s mental wellbeing. He grew increasingly anxious about food, sceptical of ingredients, and started severely restricting his diet. His condition came to light only after his parents took him for counselling for generalised anxiety disorder. The sessions revealed something unexpected—Singh was suffering from Orthorexia Nervosa (ON).