| Description |
This thesis examines how culturally positive views of "healthy eating" and a difficulty distinguishing those widely-held cultural beliefs from disordered patterns of thought and behavior are hindering the study of orthorexia as a public health concern, specifically in developing a diagnostic and measuring prevalence. This paper is a qualitative, thematic analysis of academic work and discussion around Orthorexia Nervosa (ON) as a proposed disease, how it is defined and measured, and how cultural values inform and potentially impede the study of this proposed disorder. Particular attention is paid to the ongoing difficulty of developing and agreeing upon a definition and diagnostic for orthorexia, the challenges this semantic problem has created for measuring prevalence and studying the disease on a population level, and the ways ON compares and contrasts with other eating disorders as a tool to illuminate some of the difficulties that are unique to ON. |
