Akademik

(OR.thoh.rek.see.uh; th as in thin)

n.

An extreme desire to eat only healthy food.

Orthorexia also can be induced by a host of extreme diets: raw foodism, with the mantra "The greatest enemy of man is the cooking stove"; macrobiotics, which mandates that vegetables be sliced in a certain fashion; the self-explanatory fruitarianism; and breatharianism, extreme fasting.

— Leslie Goldman, "When almost no food is right," Chicago Tribune, October 14, 2001

This transference of all of life's value into the act of eating makes orthorexia a true disorder. In this essential characteristic, orthorexia bears many similarities to the two well-known eating disorders anorexia and bulimia. Where the bulimic and anorexic focus on the quantity of food, the orthorexic fixates on its quality. All three give food an excessive place in the scheme of life.

— Steven Bratman, "Health Food Junkie," Yoga Journal, October 31, 1997

This word is based on the more famous (and, so far, more widely recognized) eating disorder, anorexia. The latter combines an-, without, and -orexia, appetite. Orthorexia modifies this by substituting the prefix ortho-, correct or proper. And in the same way that a sufferer of anorexia (also: anorexia nervosa) is called an (or is described as) anorexic, a sufferer of orthorexia (orthorexia nervosa) is an (or is described as) orthorexic. (A synonym for an orthorexic is food-fraidy.)

The term was coined by Steven Bratman, and he provides the earliest citation.