“Orthorexia nervosa is defined as an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food.” Want to know if you’re orthorexic? “The ORTO-15 is the most widely accepted assessment tool used to screen for orthorexic tendencies….” A score of 40 or lower was considered the best threshold for an orthorexia diagnosis. There are 15 questions, scored from one…
Orthorexia nervosa is “an unrecognized psychological eating disorder in which the person becomes obsessed with eating pure, healthy and right kinds of foods to improve health.” Whereas individuals with recognized eating disorders like anorexia are concerned with the quantity of food, orthorexics care about the quality of their food. “Many researchers have raised questions about…
I trace the source and legitimacy of a disorder purporting to describe an “unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.” Orthorexia nervosa is described as “a fixation on the virtue of food or unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.” Orthorexia has been styled as a type of “self-righteous eating” or “as ‘clean eating’ by those who are involved…
The case for plant-based eating to reduce the burden of diabetes has never been stronger. There are all sorts of different scoring systems to rate diet quality. My favorite, for its simplicity, is the dietary phytochemical index—a fancy name for a simple concept. It’s just the percentage of your calories from whole plant foods, from…
Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite vegetables and a delicious way for me to tick off the “other vegetables” boxes on my Daily Dozen checklist. What has the latest research on their benefits found? What is the best way to cook them? This infographic summarizes the main takeaways and features some simple recipes. Get…
Can we treat the cause of infant reflux with maternal milk elimination? There has been a longstanding problem among zookeepers: The gorillas were throwing up all of the time. “The practice of regurgitation has never been reported in wild Gorillas but it has unfortunately been accepted as normal by many keepers of captive animals.” What…
Genetic differences in caffeine metabolism may explain the Jekyll and Hyde effects of coffee. Three-quarters of American adults drink coffee and about half do so on a daily basis. That comes out to a million tons of coffee every year. Might there be “grounds for concern?” I look at the differential benefits of coffee consumption…
Which foods have the greatest cavity-causing potential? Nearly half a century ago at a Senate hearing on nutrition, a Dr. Nizel from Tufts suggested that sugary breakfast cereals “should be banned in the best interest for all concerned, particularly children,” perhaps not surprisingly, since he was a professor of dental medicine. As I discuss in…
Every month, we publish around eight new videos, four Friday Favorites, eight blogs, and four podcasts on NutritionFacts.org. We are bursting at the seams with all sorts of health and nutrition information, so we wrapped up the juiciest bits into a nice, bite-sized blog as an end-of-month recap in case you missed anything or just…
Meet Hannah Che. We had the pleasure of talking with Hannah about food, traditions, stories, and her new cookbook The Vegan Chinese Kitchen. Read the interview, and try her delicious recipe for millet congee. In your experience, how have you found food to tell a story and shape culture? Coming from an immigrant family,…