1. 'Eat better, not less' : clean eating and Orthorexia Nervosa in contemporary British history
- Author
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Morgan, Louise
- Subjects
DA Great Britain ,GT Manners and customs - Abstract
Orthorexia was initially named in 1996, referring to symptoms of patients who were obsessed with healthy eating and food purity, rather than body size and weight as in cases of anorexia nervosa. Recent popular interest in 'clean eating' in twenty-first century Britain, along with the rise of health gurus through expanding social media networks, such as Ella Mills (Deliciously Ella), has been cited as the cause of an outbreak of orthorexia. Current medical discourse on the illness presents it as a modern development in the wider history of eating disorders, with campaigners fighting for its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This thesis understands orthorexia and clean eating not as something entirely new, dependent on the age of social media, but rather as part of a longer history of obsession with dieting and healthy eating. This work builds on historical studies of dieting and eating disorders to explore the relationship between the individual, the body, wider culture and society, and food - and importantly, how these relationships become disordered. Chapter One explores histories of food, wellness, and dieting. Chapter Two provides a detailed examination of the work of British clean eaters, while Chapter Three discusses the backlash they faced. Chapter Four uses the history of anorexia nervosa to develop an understanding of the creation of eating disorders. Finally, Chapter Five explores orthorexia considering this history. Using a variety of primary sources including cookbooks, self-help literature, newspapers, and social media, it asks the fundamental question: can clean eating and orthorexia be understood as part of a wider history of dieting and disordered eating, furthered by contemporary obsessions with social media and influencers, as current medical literature would suggest? Or rather, is it part of a longer cultural obsession with our own health and diet?
- Published
- 2023