Though not formally recognized in the DSM-5, orthorexia is receiving increased attention, especially as social media fuels disordered thinking and eating. A 2023 meta-analysis<\/a> shows symptoms of orthorexia are rising across genders. For men, restrictive eating is often linked to achieving ideal physical performance. For women, it\u2019s more commonly tied to a desire for purity \u2014 eating in a way that feels clean and natural. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have played a major role in normalizing this anxiety by cloaking misinformation in the language of \u201cwellness.\u201d<\/p>\n Courtesy of Ilana Amselem<\/p>\n It was disturbingly easy for me to fall into this world. It started with small, seemingly harmless choices. I bought a different brand of yogurt. I tried a new water filter. I skipped dining out. But over time, these tweaks accumulated into an identity. And the repetition, along with the sheer volume of content that continually reinforced the same messages, made it feel like the truth.<\/p>\n In fact, a 2017 study<\/a> found that nearly half of Instagram users following health food accounts showed signs of orthorexia. TikTok and other short-form video platforms have only amplified the reach of obsessive food messaging, turning personal anxiety into a cultural script.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to pinpoint exactly what changed in the years that followed. After an intense breakup left me feeling unmoored, I turned to food as a way to reclaim control. Health, however I defined it, suddenly took center stage. With so much in my life up in the air, leaving my health to chance didn\u2019t feel like a real option. I had no clue where I was headed or who I was becoming, so I clung to something I could manage: my meals. <\/p>\n I mostly stopped eating in restaurants. My sisters thought that my stringent diet was bogus. I couldn\u2019t disagree with them, because I literally did not know the facts. They would roll their eyes every time I exclaimed that a snack product was seed oil-free. I fell down a rabbit hole. I stopped touching receipts (due to forever chemicals). I bought a special water filter (to eliminate fluoride from my drinking water). I stopped drinking out of plastic bottles (to reduce my exposure to microplastics). I threw away my AirPods (bluetooth brain damage).<\/p>\n I worked out constantly on little food, running my body ragged trying to be the \u201chealthiest version of myself.\u201d I pushed my body to its limits chasing an illusion of wellness shaped by influencers who profited off my health anxiety.<\/p>\n My Instagram feed became a relentless procession of wellness evangelists, each pushing their own supplement and preaching that everything else was toxic. If I wanted to be truly healthy, I needed to buy in. Americans now spend an estimated $32 million<\/a> per day shopping on TikTok, with more than 79% of purchases falling under health and beauty.<\/p>\n This booming industry includes everything from vitamins and herbal tinctures to protein powders, drink mixes and adaptogenic gummies. In 2023, the U.S. supplement market was valued at $57 billion<\/a>; by 2028, it\u2019s projected to reach $239 billion<\/a>. There\u2019s serious money to be made by stoking fear about everyday foods and then selling the so-called solution. <\/p>\n At Whole Foods, I\u2019d drift through the aisles, scrutinizing labels like they were sacred texts. I lost nearly 30 pounds. And the truth is I thought I looked better. That\u2019s the part I still struggle with. It\u2019s hard to untangle the health anxiety from the thrill of being thin. I had never really cared before, but now that I was smaller, I liked it. My quest for purity and optimization quietly morphed into something more familiar and more insidious: a desire to keep looking the way I did.<\/p>\n By September of 2024, my hair was falling out. I asked my friend, a dermatologist, what could be going on. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably just stress,\u201d I reasoned. <\/p>\n \u201cYou have lost a lot of weight, Ilana,\u201d she responded. <\/p>\n At a party the following month, three friends, independently, mentioned my weight loss. It was obvious they\u2019d talked about it behind my back, and the realization stung. What were they seeing that I couldn\u2019t? <\/p>\n Still, their comments felt offhanded \u2014 there were no serious confrontations and nothing that felt like true concern. Though they noticed my weight loss, my eating habits had changed so gradually that even those closest to me barely registered how intense my restrictions had become.<\/p>\n Then, I started grad school, and I suddenly had to explain my eating habits to strangers at lunch. It was embarrassing. Unlike my friends, these new people hadn\u2019t been slowly desensitized to what I was doing \u2014 or not doing. I started to examine the content on my feed with a new lens, and I began to scrutinize the videos in a way I hadn\u2019t before. <\/p>\n The more I saw, the more uneasy I became. I wanted to escape the algorithm, so I began reading, at first out of defensiveness \u2014 desperate to validate what I already believed. I was hoping to find studies that confirmed everything I\u2019d absorbed from social media: that seed oils were toxic, that fluoride was dangerous, that microplastics were slowly poisoning me. But the deeper I went, the harder it became to ignore the cracks in what I\u2019d been told.<\/p>\n I combed through nutrition studies, public health reports, interviews with registered dietitians, and medical reviews. I tried to trace the origins of some of the most viral claims. Who first said seed oils were inflammatory? Why were certain additives labeled as carcinogens by influencers but deemed safe by every major health organization? <\/p>\n I started to realize that much of what I\u2019d internalized had no grounding in science. The sources cited in wellness content were rarely peer-reviewed studies, and when legitimate research was referenced, it was often inconclusive, outdated, or so narrowly focused that drawing such sweeping conclusions felt irresponsible. When studies were cited, they were almost always stripped of context. The most alarming or sensational detail was pulled out, inflated, and repeated for maximum engagement. <\/p>\n What stunned me, more than anything, was how thin the foundation was \u2014 how much of my belief system had been built on fragments, not facts. But when you\u2019re inundated with content that insists you\u2019re being poisoned by your food, your water, your environment \u2014 and that you\u2019re being lied to by the organizations who are supposed to protect you \u2014 it starts to feel irresponsible not to listen. <\/p>\n Slowly, I started to let go. I saw a therapist and opened up about my eating habits. She helped me see that demonizing entire food groups was rarely productive and pushed me to eat foods I had previously deemed \u201cunhealthy.\u201d I ate out more. I let myself have a French fry now and then. However, it took time and significant energy to loosen the grip, and I\u2019m still not entirely free.<\/p>\n I can count on one hand the number of receipts I\u2019ve touched in the past several years. I still hesitate before eating something greasy, wondering what long-term damage it might do. But I take a breath, acknowledge the thought, and try not to let it lead or linger. I\u2019ve blocked the influencers I used to idolize and stopped scanning every ingredient list I encounter. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not easy. Even now I still worry about what I\u2019m putting in or near my body. But I\u2019m trying to base my actions on science, not social media.<\/p>\n As I sit here in this diner, my legs sticking to the vinyl seat, the waitress drops off our food. I stare at the overcooked scrambled eggs, topped with square slices of glossy, plastic-looking American cheese.<\/strong> This cannot be healthy, I think while taking a bite.<\/p>\n Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identity of individuals mentioned in this essay.<\/p>\n Ilana Amselem is a graduate student and journalist who often writes about art, architecture and pop culture.<\/p>\n Do you have a compelling personal story you\u2019d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we\u2019re looking for here<\/a> and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am sitting at a diner with my father on 53rd and 1st in New York City. Scanning…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":426686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[990,210,37971,198660,345,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-426685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-food","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-influencers","11":"tag-orthorexia","12":"tag-social-media","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115667574502538236","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6900d9a61800000b3cfe470f.png\")
The author.<\/p>\n