An obsession with “clean eating” is fueling a rise in orthorexia, a disordered eating pattern driven by fear and misinformation. Experts warn that social media trends are blurring the line between healthy habits and harmful fixation.
United States: With all the sudden popularity of fad diets, lots of protein-filled foods, and gadgets for tracking health stats, it’s simple to fall into the health-obsession trend.
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With so much advice on the internet and social media, it sometimes becomes hard to understand what your body really needs and what you can skip.
Many videos on social media suggest some foods are “bad” and use “fake ingredients,” only helping to increase people’s interest in healthy eating.
Healthy eating is helpful for your overall health, but there comes a point where it isn’t beneficial.
Apparently there is growing concern over people that want to eat pure, healthy food.
— We The Media (@WeTheMedia17) May 15, 2025
There's a term for this, called orthorexia, and many want it classified as a mental illness to want to eat healthy.
I'm surprised the title wasn't something like 'You want to eat healthy? You… pic.twitter.com/XQXCoBnjQW
If you pay too much attention to healthy eating, it might turn into a problem called Orthorexia, which is found more often in our society today, and some studies reveal that social media also plays a big role in this.
There is no mention of Orthorexia in the DSM-5, even though two dietitians mentioned to HuffPost that it should eventually be considered a recognized diagnosis.
According to Beth Auguste, a maternal wellness dietitian in Philadelphia, “It’s subclinical disordered eating, so it’s not something that has a clinical diagnosis code, but it’s widely recognized in the disordered eating community,” huffpost.com reported.
″[Orthorexia] can be generally categorized as a preoccupation with healthy eating and a fixation on the purity of food,” as Auguste added.
“It’s an obsession with what someone perceives as the proper way of eating, or the healthy way of eating,” as per Beth Heise, who is a registered dietitian with OnPoint Nutrition.
Since many people choose healthy foods to protect their health or keep their cholesterol and blood sugar in control, it’s sometimes not easy to identify which diet is safe and which is not.
