an eating disorder characterized by a fixation on eating what the sufferer considers to be healthful food, which can ultimately lead to early death...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa

I am amazing to discover this! My mother's behavior almost perfectly fits the description. She has grown more and more obsessed with health food. Now she will not tolerate the smallest amount of fat, not a gram of sugar or cholesterol. If the toast is too dark, she will act as though eating it will kill us, because she read that burnt food causes cancer. Red meat is totally out. If we go to a restaurant, she orders hot water, and brings out a teabag from her purse. I can't wait to tell her about it, she is a councellor too, so maybe she will get it.

Well damn, this was my least popular thread ever.

an eating disorder characterized by a fixation on eating what the sufferer considers to be healthful food, which can ultimately lead to early death...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthorexia_nervosa

I am amazing to discover this! My mother's behavior almost perfectly fits the description. She has grown more and more obsessed with health food. Now she will not tolerate the smallest amount of fat, not a gram of sugar or cholesterol. If the toast is too dark, she will act as though eating it will kill us, because she read that burnt food causes cancer. Red meat is totally out. If we go to a restaurant, she orders hot water, and brings out a teabag from her purse. I can't wait to tell her about it, she is a councellor too, so maybe she will get it.

It does sound like your mother is going to far and the stress costs may outweigh the health benefits.

If your mother is really not eating fat however she will die soon.

There is some fat, like nuts and oil in cooking spray, low fat cheese sometimes...

Ugh.
I mean nuts are OK. My guess is the cooking spray is unhealthy, especially if she heats it high.

There are books out there on good fats and bad fats. Not to contribute to her problem but they might help. I mean there is just nothing wrong with eating some olive oil or sesame oil and research backs this up heartily. Fish and flax oils are great for the body and reduce all sorts of degenerative problems.

Is she trying to be healthy or thin?

Healthy, and she knows all too well about the dangers of heating anything up too much, she knows about good fats and bad fats. She eats flax oil especially. However, orthorexia includes such knowledge in it's definition. She's just obsessive about it, and enforcing her own dietary rules in others.

That's completely counterproductive. Refusing to eat any fat at all is not healthy.

Well damn, this was my least popular thread ever.Sorry dude. There have been a lot of interesting threads since the end of the holidays and it takes a while to get through them all.My mother's behavior almost perfectly fits the description. She has grown more and more obsessed with health food. Now she will not tolerate the smallest amount of fat. . . .Her obsession has become irrational and can no longer be characterized as "health food" since it's not a healthy diet. Humans require a certain minimum amount of fat in our diet every day. It's required for our metabolic processes, the most obvious being the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.. . . .not a gram of sugar. . . .This is a rejection of one of the evolutionary adaptations that makes us human. When the first angiosperms sprang up, there was a bounty of fruit up there for any animal that could climb up and get it, otherwise it all went to the flying insects. Primitive shrews said, "I just gotta get me some of that good stuff," and developed the claws and musculature to climb. From the shrews sprang the sloths (well I guess "spring" and "sloth" don't really belong in the same sentence:)), from the sloths sprang the primates, and the rest is our family tree. One of the things that defines our evolutionary line is: We love sugar!

As I've noted in other threads, the second thing that defines us is our love of meat: becoming hunters is what differentiated us from all other primates. And the third is our love of dogs. No other animal has formed a voluntary multi-species community and I believe this is what made it possible for us to consider living in harmony with our own kind in villages and eventually cities. (After living in small nomadic packs of hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, the entire human race began congregating in large permanent settlements just a couple of millennia after the domestication of dogs. Coincidence?) To deny our love of sugar and meat, as the nutritional fundamentalists do, is as retrograde as to deny our love of dogs, as the Islamic fundamentalists do.. . . . or cholesterol.This is just plain silly. I'm sure it's been about twenty years since the difference between "good" and "bad" cholesterol was isolated, and since we slapped our foreheads and realized that the cholesterol we eat is broken down by digestion and doesn't automatically show up in our bodies as cholesterol at all.If the toast is too dark, she will act as though eating it will kill us, because she read that burnt food causes cancer.Well even a broken clock is right twice a day and she's on target with that one. But there is a line between burnt toast and merely well-done toast, and it's really easy to taste the difference.Red meat is totally out.We are the only primate with a metabolism specifically evolved to eat red meat, so this falls into the category of nutritional fundamentalism. There's nothing wrong with a diet of farmed flightless poultry with white breast and wing muscles, or of seafood. But the contaminants in all meat are worth tracking, whether the antibiotics and hormones in farmed animals or the heavy metals and other industrial waste in seafood. Nonetheless to give up entirely on animal flesh goes deeply against our nature and creates internal conflict, much like the triumph of rational atheism over the instinct to believe in the supernatural. But furthermore one must be very careful to balance a vegetarian diet because we simply are not built for it. Ancient human remains show that at the end of the Mesolithic Era and its meat-intensive diet, the life expectancy of a person who survived the ravages of childhood and made it to adulthood was almost 50. After the Agrictultural Revolution, a grain-intensive diet literally halved that, to around 22 in the Roman Empire. It wasn't until the last century, when we learned about vitamins and minerals (and also became prosperous enough to eat more meat) that we reattained the life expectancy of cavemen.

Your mother is not the only modern human who is very likely damaging her health by eating what she believes is healthy, and she comes from a long line of 'em. :)If we go to a restaurant, she orders hot water, and brings out a teabag from her purse.I'm not sure what this is about. Does she drink tea instead of eating dinner? Herbal tea is probably not bad for her as long as she doesn't overdo it. Neither is real tea, although I represent a small but sad minority of people who are extremely sensitive to caffeine.I can't wait to tell her about it, she is a councellor too, so maybe she will get it.Don't bother. If she were rational about her eating habits she would have picked up on the wealth of information about balanced nutrition years ago. She has a problem and may need professional counseling. This is like anorexia nervosa. There's a fine line between eschewing the overeating habit that is part of our culture, and eating less than your body needs. That line is relatively easy to spot (if you turns sideways your reflection in the mirror vanishes :)), and still people fall into an undereating habit (or worse, ugh) that becomes a behavior problem. The line between health food and a fad that does not provide adequate nutrition is much more difficult to observe, especially from the inside. She probably needs a stronger force than the voice of a loved one that she is already programmed to tune out. If you harp on it you may actually harm your cause by turning up her Spider-filter. Is there anyone else in her life whom she trusts and who can get through to her? This could be very tough, she probably doesn't believe doctors either or one of them would have warned her by now.

I think this fits Gwenyth Paltrow. That whole macrobiotic diet thing is insane to me. What's the point of having a long life if you never get to eat a hamburger or fried chicken?

You don't understand Fraggle. She does use flax oil for it's healthful properties. She does use cooking spray, which is oil. She does eat fruit, which had fructose in it. She knows the difference between good and bad cholesterol and she started to eat chicken again. The tea part is because retaurant food doesn't live up to her standards. She probably knows more about nutrition than any of us (except SAM).

It's more of a mental thing. If I use more than a little no-cholesteral margarine substitute, she freaks out. If the toast is even a little brown, she will demand that we scrape it all off. She hands out carrots for snacks without asking if we want one. She will not let me cook dinner without demanding to watch everything I do. When my dad or brothers go out, they make sure to go to a restaurant and make up for the lack of substantial food. When she buys food, it cannot have any fat listed on the label. Although she makes what she considers healthy food for us, she lives on yogurt with soy nuts and raisins. I don't think she is in danger of dying, but I don't think this style of living is mentally heathy.

She does use flax oil for it's healthful properties. She does use cooking spray, which is oil.That's not enough fat for a human diet.She does eat fruit, which had fructose in it.That's good.She knows the difference between good and bad cholesterol. . . .But does she know that doesn't matter when she's eating it? Either one is just one more generic source of saturated fat. They're only "good" or "bad" after her body disassembles those molecules and rebuilds them as cholesterol, if that's what it's doing with them. If she has a low BMI she might not have enough cholesterol to worry about.. . . . and she started to eat chicken again.That's good, especially if she eats the dark meat and gets some fat.It's more of a mental thing. If I use more than a little no-cholesterol margarine substitute, she freaks out. If the toast is even a little brown, she will demand that we scrape it all off.She may know more than I do about nutrition but she's not putting it into practice. These quirks are annoying but virtually harmless if that's as far as she goes, but I get the impression you're trying to tell us that she goes much farther.

An excellent analogy is the problem gambler. They understand probability theory perfectly and most of them can calculate odds very accurately in their heads. But they don't use that knowledge to their advantage, they use it to ruin their lives and usually the lives of their families.She hands out carrots for snacks without asking if we want one.She's starting to sound like a control freak. If she is really as savvy as you say about nutrition then she knows that we can all eat something besides frelling carrots without ruining our health, if you ask me a vegetable that should be illegal to serve raw.She will not let me cook dinner without demanding to watch everything I do.I don't remember, did I already say "control freak?" :)When my dad or brothers go out, they make sure to go to a restaurant and make up for the lack of substantial food.The classic addiction scenario: The whole family is enablers! Rather then confronting her and intervening, they just put up with her, pretend she's all right, and go off to eat a nice enjoyable meal without her insufferable whining.When she buys food, it cannot have any fat listed on the label.I suggested above that despite the few grams of fat she's getting in her imitation Pam spray and the few milligrams more in her flaxseed supplement, she may not be getting the minimum daily requirement of fat. This reinforces my suspicion.Although she makes what she considers healthy food for us, she lives on yogurt with soy nuts and raisins.If it's not fat-free yogurt that might satisfy her daily fat requirement, but even if it's just low-fat I'd do the arithmetic for her and make sure. In any case that diet is utterly worthless for vitamins and minerals. If she's a nutritional expert I hope she's taking a generous assortment of supplements.I don't think she is in danger of dying. . . .You haven't completely reassured me about that. I'll have to trust you to add up the fat, vitamins and minerals. The one I don't trust is HER. Despite her deep knowledge of nutrition, she is too eccentric to be trusted to eat a healthy diet.. . . . but I don't think this style of living is mentally heathy.Hmmm. It's not easy to assess someone else's mental health. She's obsessive-compulsive and a control freak, she's annoying the crap out of her family, and even driving them to the point of sneaking off to get a satisfying meal. For sure she's not the most well-adjusted person in town and her family is becoming at least partially dysfunctional.

What is the source of this? Did she used to be overweight? Did she get a bad cholesterol reading from her blood work one year? Did someone close to her die of putatively nutritional causes? Has she been doing this for a long time or is it just a fad that she's into? Are there other people in her life she trusts, like a doctor, who are trying to get her to be more reasonable?

Unless she's really gone around the bend, OR this diet is actually not healthy for her (like I said, I want to see numbers, not the vague reassurances of someone who loves her and would rather not contemplate the possibility of a nutritional expert ruining her own health), then you might have to settle for not being able to change the way she treats herself. After all it is everybody's right to do what they want with their own body in a free society, or at least it bloody well ought to be.

You may have to work on this from the perspective of how it affects you, and the other family members will have to do that for themselves. Be assertive. Don't eat the damn carrots. Tell her to frell off if she bitches about the amount of cooking spray--or better yet start cooking like a mensch and use olive oil. Keep your toast out of her hands. Buy foods you like and if she doesn't like them she doesn't have to eat them. Endure the arguments in the dining room and gang up on her, rather than making peace by caving in to a bully.

Which is what she is! Her life is her life, but she doesn't get to make yours miserable.

Well, I live on the other side of the country now, so it's not a problem for me. There are other factors that make enforcing the family's food desires problematic. I think you made some good points, an obsessive and myopic attitude towards food can be just a harmful as eating nothing but junk food.

Isn't that how people with anorexia start?

That's pretty interesting, spidey. It's admirable to try to eat more healthily but it does sound like she has a problem.

My relatives on both sides ate "terribly" according to today's standards--lots of meat, cheese, eggs, bacon, fat, sugar, sweets, some drinking, and smoking etc. My great-grandparents on both sides lived to be over 90 with no illnesses of any kind. My grandparents on both sides are still alive and in their 90s. No illness, no nothing. Not even glasses or arthritis. HORRIBLE eating habits plus drinking and smoking with no exercise.:eek: I think genes have a LOT to do with health.

Your Mom will have to decide if/when she's had enough of her eating plan. I hope she's ok. :)

Isn't that how people with anorexia start?

Anorexia is mainly a mental disorder in which the person thinks he/she is fat by looking at his/her own image. I would not say that it is caused from having an addiction to food, but simply from peer pressure, extreme phobia of becoming fat, or their unsatisfaction with their own appearance. They usually voluntarily starve themselves until they are extremely thin and malnourished.

It is really sad to see someone with this disorder, especially if it is combined with bulimia. I had a friend who was two years older than me and was anorexic-bulimic. I really don't know what caused it, but she was not overweight at all. All of her friends, including me, tried to get her help with her body being nothing more than skin and bones. Despite all of the support, she died due to an infection in the esophagus.