It has been called the “new anorexia.” People are starting to follow a strict diet that involves avoiding all processed foods, fats, animal derivatives, preservatives, milk, and egg products. Essentially, it sounds a lot like a vegan diet, except a little stricter on some sides. There are some who have gone on the raw food diet, basically eating only fruits and vegetables in the raw, and in extreme cases eating only fruit and vegetables they grew and picked themselves. But this is a little bit different as it goes too far to extremes.
As you obsess with this parituclar diet, you start to cut out vital nutrients and elements such as macronutrients, antinutrients, and you could over time become orthorexic. Parents and adults are of course making the choice for themselves to live healthier lives and become healthier people in general. But some of these parents are also raising their children with these diet habits, leading to higher rates of orthorexia in children.
The parents are often called “health food junkies.” But more critical crowds would call them eccentric, and as their children grow up with it, skeptics would say they too become rather eccentric. It is certainly not a bad thing to teach your child healthy eating habits or exercise habits. But when a 5 year old child is starting to develop extreme worries and concerns about what is or is not in their foods and the preservatives or fillers that may harm them, it’s time to rethink all the things we thought we knew before.
No one would ever fault a parent for trying to take care of their children, especially in these times of ever rising rates of obesity. I would be the last to even begin to fault them for that. But when you go overboard in anything, you become yet another problem in the same area of life, and you contribute to the other end of the same problem. In this particular case, while obesity is bad, the malnourishment and rising anxiety levels that children are experiencing are equally bad.
As of yet, there are no official studies, nor are there signs that would indicate it is spreading quite as quickly as obesity. It is not very widely spread, actually experiencing an increase of only 15% officially speaking. Patients are doing less extreme things without question such as reducing their intake of refined sugars and high fat foods for example. But I would caution parents and adults without children alike not to go to the extremes of making their prodigy or themselves overly obsessed with foods to the point of dysfunction.