Is Gluten-Free the New Eating Disorder?

Jennifer Lawrence is grabbing headlines again, but this time it’s not hackers and voyeurs on the wrong side of the outspoken star: it’s followers of the gluten-free fad – people she says are part of a “new cool eating disorder”.

J-Law took a stab at the diet in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. The 24-year-old actress is dating Chris Martin – the ex-husband of Hollywood’s most vocal vegan, Gwynneth Paltrow, whose hit gluten-free cookbook It’s All Good, was published last year. Paltrow has led the charge in making a celebrity lifestyle of healthy eating, but while Paltrow has been lauded by some for being an exponent of health in a country plagued by an obesity epidemic, others might say that her penchant for gluten-free, dairy-free, meat-free and organic eating borders on an unhealthy obsession.

Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that is characterized by an obsessive preoccupation with avoiding foods that one perceives to be ‘unhealthy’: an unhealthy fixation on healthy eating. And, although the disorder starts out as a benign attempt to eat more healthily, orthorexia sufferers soon loose perspective and the ability to moderate their insistence on ‘foood purity’. As is the case with other eating disorders, orthorexia sufferers’ self-esteem becomes entwined with their ability to maintain a rigid diet. But, inevitably, the individual’s food choices become so restrictive that their health deteriorates and can lead to malnutrition. And, as is the case with orthorexia, rigid eating can also lead to social exclusion, as their preoccupation with health crowds out other aspects of their life.

So where do we draw the line? And when does a healthy inclination to snack organic morph into an obsessive inability to face normal grub like potatoes? While Paltrow seems happy enough with her healthy habits, and the answer may not lie in Lawrence’s love for pasta and pizza, the latter’s words may serve as a warning to blind followers of food fads.