Choosing Healthy Foods Now Called a Mental Disorder

naturalnews.com | Mike Adams | 06/29/10

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In its never-ending attempt to fabricate "mental disorders" out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they've invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you're "mentally diseased" and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa -- which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating."

But they can't just called it "nervous healthy eating disorder" because that doesn't sound like they know what they're talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn't). That's where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means "bones with holes in them").

Getting back to this fabricated "orthorexia" disease, the Guardian goes on to report, "Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out."

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there's something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be "normal?" If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that's okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is "normal" when it comes to foods?

I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It's an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that's all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, "The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished."

Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating "good" foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That's about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I've ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green

It's just like I reported years ago: You're not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you're eating and just do what you're told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn't you know? And if you "obsess" over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you're weird. Maybe even sick.

That's the message they're broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are "normal" and "sane" and "nourished." But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished.

But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods.

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they're told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what's really happening in the world around them.

In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods -- with all the medicinal nutrients still intact -- begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become "aware" and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix, so to speak.

This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It's because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on.

But living as a zombie is, in one way quite "normal" in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn't make it normal in my book: The real "normal" is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself.

But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you're eating real food.

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don't expect to be popular with mainstream mental health "experts" or dieticians -- they're all being programmed to consider you to be "crazy" because you don't follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals.

But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren't. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There's nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the health experts who keep inventing new fictitious diseases and disorders, check out my popular Disease Mongering Engine web page where you can invent your own new diseases at the click of a button! You'll find it at: Natural News - Disease Mongering Engine  


24 Comments | Leave a comment


I am a vegan and agree with the basic premise here. However, this article is guilty of the very logical fallacy it is criticizing; post hoc, ergo propter hoc--the confusion of coexistence with causality. People don't necessarily think more clearly because they eat healthy food, although that is an entirely defensible and probably correct argument. The more logical conclusion is that people who eat healthily are by nature critical enough to be mindful of their behavior in the first place and have already studied these issues with the goal of living responsibly and in accordance with humane and environmentally sensible values.

It completely undermines the premise of this article to make the absurd claim that food choices are the cause and not the consequence of responsible life choices.


Deanne Jade seems to be an interesting character. She made one sensible statement: "There is a fine line between people who think they are taking care of themselves by manipulating their diet and those who have orthorexia...".

However, the distinction was buried by the overwhelming sensationalism of the article's hysterical tone. For example, Jade's comment "...the condition is on the increase ...It's everywhere..." Oh dear. Poor Deanne Jade sounds quite paranoid!

She digs herself in even deeper by moaning about "...the people who think it's normal if their friends stop eating entire food groups..." That's the sort of claim made by "experts" bought-and-paid-for by the meat and dairy marketing boards.


Agree with you, Deborah--The first refuge of the "experts" is to claim "all things in moderation." The second is to demonize anyone who chooses to eliminate unhealthy categories of food. Junk food in moderation? Saturated fat in moderation? No, some unhealthy practices have been normalized just as smoking was until a few decades ago. Smoking moderately is still smoking. Eating moderate amounts of saturated fat or sugar is still unhealthy. Simply because feeding children sugar water or soda was (and often still is) the norm doesn't make it an acceptable form of nutrition.

As McDougall, Ornish and other medical practitioners point out, moderation of unhealthy diets doesn't reverse the damage they cause. Only by eliminating some unhealthy food choices and replacing them with better ones can we compensate for the cumulative damage they cause. Much research on reversing coronary artery disease validates that view.


That's hysterical. I guess I have that disease. Sign me up for the meds. ROTFL

Ken Leebow



I think this reliance on so-called authorities has become a real problem in our country. Many of us have forgotten how to think for ourselves.

Some 30 years ago, I used to listen to experts on TV, in magazines, my doctors, etc., thinking they knew what they were talking about. And as I lived my life, I found I had to figure out what was best for me, as I believe many who are VegSource readers have. I often got angry when I discovered the experts were wrong and I felt deceived. It's not that I didn't listen to "authorities", but I did evaluate what they said, did research on my own so as not to listen to just one expert on a topic and decided how it fit in my own life based on my experience. Sometimes I'm wrong, but so are the experts. They are making their best guess based on what they know at the time.

We can't give up our right and responsibility to think for ourselves. I think TV has had a big effect of keeping us occupied and entertained so we don't think and do for ourselves. We need to be more self-sufficient. We are losing farm land, too, and get lots of our food from other countries. I think that's a shame.

I'm concerned about things like the government takeover of health care because I see it as giving up individual control over our bodies. I fear there will be a very small panel of people dictating treatment for the masses and desiring to make us "docile" and "dumbed down" so they can control us. We can only hope they will agree with our own view, but since we are all so different then likely this panel in charge of our health will not agree with everything each of us believes to be right for ourselves. I'm sure I will get a few thumbs down on this for those that believe government run health care is an ideal, but I'm not willing to give up my medical freedom just to be assured of getting some questionable, cookie cutter form of health care the rest of my life.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. We rely on people to tell us how to vote, how to dress, how to decorate our homes and how to invest. This new tactic is telling healthy eaters they are mentally ill and that's quite a motivator for giving up healthy eating because who wants to be thought of as mentally ill?


Orthorexia is a scam. Another huge problem with whole plant foods is that they are not very profitable. Hence another need to push animal and manufactured foods. http://perfectformuladiet.com/plant-based-nutrition/whole-foods-the-secret-you-discover-for-yourself


Reply about Ms. Stanger and the perfectformuladiet web site and book--I have no connection to her, her book, or her web site but have stumbled across them while web surfing and recommend them. Very sensible and thoughtful debunking of the ludicrous notion of "orthorexia." Remember that the term "hysteria" was coined by the Victorians for similar, specious reasons to legitimize behavior that they believed needed to be pathologized by the limited medical orthodoxy of the time. It originated in the primitive and sexist belief that women's "neuroses" were rooted in disorders of the uterus. And that was only 120 or so years ago.


I am a psychiatrist. This is completely idiotic. It reinforces a basic truth that intelligent people can be incredible morons. However, on another level, it's not moronic. It's insidious and dangerous. This "diagnosis" is not about helping people. It's about generating more patients and more money for the psychiatric community. The more diagnoses they can invent, the more money they can make. This is unethical behavior and one more example of the decaying, downward spiral of our civilization which champions money and profits at the expense of honesty, integrity and humanity. People promoting this with a straight face should be ashamed of themselves.


Dr. Jacobson--Delighted to see you posting here. You can help. If by some crazy quirk of the approval process, someone might propose this as an actual diagnostic category for the new DSM. This is so ridiculous that any practitioner deserving of the license should organize like-minded people to discredit this dangerous nonsense.


i agree with you, sara. unfortunately, the DSM is a huge, multi-million dollar game, and the mucky mucks on the DSM-V committee are an elite group unlikely to be swayed by psychiatric common folk like myself.


For Dr. Jacobson--It's possible to create enough public awareness to obstruct any attempt to legitimize "orthorexia"--particularly if enough psychiatric common folk like you give enough interviews and are willing to make public statements. There have been other absurd movements to pathologize normal behavior that were blocked by public backlash and sensible protests by practitioners.


Excellent article, Mr Adams...thank you. It's humorous while also sad & pathetic. This is
insanity & criminal, IMO.


I have been doing some reading on this topic. When the sh*t starts hitting the fan, I find it helps to go visit the Horse's Mouth. :-)

The concept of "orthorexia" was coined by Dr. Steven Bratman. http://www.orthorexia.com/

It does *NOT* describe consciously eating healthy that has good results. It describes an extreme situation, when healthy eating becomes obsessive to the point of having a destructive impact on a person's life.

Although I'm not normally a fan of the beyondveg website, it is a place to view Bratman's own story which is very human and engaging.


Although the Guardian article sounded like a witch-hunt against any sort of healthy eating, Bratman's own comments reflect a depth of understanding that offers a realistic perspective.

Our fear of course is that other mental health professionals, less tempered by the fire of kindness & experience, may be heavy-handed in their application of the concept. Sadly, that may happen. Just like any tool or resource, it can be used to help or hurt, depending on the intention of the practitioner.

We can be thankful though that western society is generally a LOT more vegan-friendly now than in the past. Many upcoming young health-care workers are vegans themselves. These days, admitting to being vegan in the doctor's office may only elicit a nod & smile, unlike 20 or 30 years ago!

With so many young health workers being healthy eaters and fitness advocates themselves, what will be considered "normal" over the next 20 to 30 years will be a LOT more vegan-friendly than in the past. After all, success speaks for itself.


Orthorexia is not a scam, it's not a way to say you are sick if you eat healthy and that there is something wrong with reading labels.

Orthorexia is not recognized as a mental disorder in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10[3] or the DSM-IV,[4] neither is it part of the proposed revision of this manual, the DSM-5.

There is a huge difference between eating healthy to live and to live to eat healthy.


No not eating "good" foods in itself will not make you malnourished but if you are so occupied that your food is "right" you can end up eating to little to get proper nourishment.

Here is an interesting list.

Eating healthy doesn't mean that you have a problem, but if it means that you spend hours every day fretting over your food and if you avoid spending time with friends because you are occupied with thinking about health food and concerned that they can't get you "proper" food. In short if thinking about healthy eating dictates every part of your life, you might have a problem.

I'm a vegan but I don't have this disorder, sure I have rules about what I eat and what I don't eat, but it's not the focus of my life.


Eating too few calories is called anorexia, not orthorexia. Anorexia is a life-threatening disorder that can strike both vegans and meat-eaters. The vegan anorexics I have known were in no way motivated by health concerns. Instead, they had body image issues and a powerful fear of gaining even a reasonable amount of weight.

Modern American culture encourages obsession with food as a form of entertainment. Think food shows on TV and radio, legions of food magazines, ultra-expensive and trendy restaurants. Culturally, it's cool to be a foodie. Unless you aim at whole plant foods, preferably organic. Then you are "orthorexic."


I know I struggled with that, but the difference is eating too few calories to lose weight and ending up doing it because you don't trust the food.
Not being a foodie is not the same as being orthorexic, I'm not a foodie, I know some about your culture but I'm no an American. I don't watch food tv-shows because they bore me. I don't buy those magazines, they bore me as well, I can't afford trendy restaurants I don't trust them being able to serve a vegan meal anyway.
I aim at whole plant foods which as much organic I can afford. But I'm not an orthorexic because I don't spend hours every day fretting over food like I did when I was in the middle of my eating disorder, I don't avoid doing things because of my diet. If I'm somewhere I can't get a proper vegan meal, I just bring a snack and eat later but I don't avoid doing things because of it.


"If you eat whole foods, preferably organic, then you are "orthorexic." Touche.

I've been expelled from one prominent animal rescue group--people who find homes for unwanted pets, not those whose behavior some may find extreme--because I pointed out that the members seemed to have no problem subsidizing the brutal killing of animals they considered food. That proved to me that their concern for animals was false: why is one food and another a pet?

The defense of meat eating is purely for taste and to protect a selfishly cherished luxurious taste. If not, why don't meat eaters eat raw and unseasoned meat? It's for taste alone and because people will go to irrational lengths to preserve a personal indulgence. On closer examination, those who left the veg way of eating were usually uninformed and made poor choices.

It should be obvious that any extreme preoccupation--with gaming, exercise, work, sex, or food--is pathological. Different practices are just that--different. And therefore threatening and worthy of being demonized. It's basic sociology.


All of what you said was well said, Sara.

And I too have been frustrated by animal rescue volunteers who will go to all lengths
to save and care for cats & dogs, but no one has lifted that dividing line for them. They need to be shown a video of what is done to the animals...or just read a few pages about it...and be asked if they are ok with that.


This is the most ridiculous diagnosis I have seen yet!!! So in other words the folks who love to eat all the fast food with the preservatives, chemicals, antibiotics, hormones, additives, and the blood and pus in cow's milk, and gasses found to color the carcinogenous flesh they call "meat" ; these people who indulge in these poisons have healthy eating patterns?? And we are the ones who are nuts? This is the way the world is today - everything is backward. I think so many people will rebel against anything that is good and right, just to rebel! With all the scientific facts and resources hitting them in the head, rebelling still just shows how terrible ignorant they really are....how very sad.
Just look at all of the unhealthy people out there suffering and dying, and how many of them have become slaves to their taste buds and then tell me who are the nit wits...
Joy Ray


Actually, health care workers are already overloaded. Most dream of having less work, so why would they want to fabricate diseases?

The author of the blog, Mike Adams is a satirical writer. It was just his reaction to a silly, sensational article published in The Guardian.

The Guardian is an infamous tabloid. Sadly, their wild stories sell. Their articles typically make false claims and twist quotes for effect.

Mike Adams amplified them and added his own spin to the point that is more fantasy than fact. It seems to be the sort of thing he does.

I contacted one of the experts quoted in the Guardian article. She laughed at the accusation of being anti-healthy diet.

Like you and I, she is well aware that obesity is a far worse problem than the very few health idealists floundering in obsession.

The wild exaggerations and satire of Mike Adams' article is easier to see in the context of his own website than here on Vegsource.


It may truly be wild exaggerations and satires of Mike Adams (sort of an Archie Bunker type), but the fact of the matter is, this is really NO joking matter; this is VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS, especially when one sees his or her own family and friends suffer and die untimely deaths due to their gluttony, and from eating "garbage food" loaded with pesticides, additives, poisonous colorings, gasses, hormones, pus and blood in dairy products, radiation, antibiotics and God only knows what else.... We should NOT think it is funny when one even jokes about such serious matters; much like making heroes on the screen out of the bad guys. What will our children think and who will they side with?
Joy Ray


The problem is that Mike Adams (the author of "Choosing Healthy Foods Now Called a Mental Disorder") falsely accused the whole psychiatric profession (that's a LOT of people!) of considering anyone (ie., everyone; again, a LOT of people) eating healthy foods as "mentally diseased".

Mike's accusation is what is ludicrous. His sweeping generality was the satire. In reality, mental health professionals generally recommend, respect and support eating a healthy diet as part of a happy, healthy lifestyle. The American Dietetic Association approves of vegan diet. The literature is packed with research that proves the benefits of a properly balanced vegan diet.

Healthy, active people enjoying their lives in constructive ways while eating selectively can *NOT* be labelled as orthorexic. That diagnosis is only considered when a person's dietary choices are causing the individual more harm than good.

For example, sadly, there are a few (very few) documented cases of individuals who actually died or been demonstrating symptoms of starvation because they couldn't bring themselves to eat anything they considered less than perfect. *THAT* is orthorexia.

Many of Mike's articles are valuable & insightful, so goodness only knows why he built his commentary on the exaggerations and fabrications in The Guardian article. I have to wonder what good he thought he was doing to "cry wolf" like that.


Orthorexia is shown as a disorder on the Mayo Clinic site and I've seen in mentioned in a couple of magazines. That's why I originally researched and blogged about it in the spring. The whole idea is ludicrous enough to be a satire, though.


Well, if you do care too much, you probably will leave less and stressed. Mental disorder is abused, but I am sure that too much of obsession is harmful. Proved http://en.optimeez.com

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