Orthopexy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An obsessive fixation on eating only foods considered pure and healthful, to the point that it harms a person's wellbeing and daily life
2. A compulsive preoccupation with achieving perfect nutritional purity through strict dietary rules that can become damaging over time
3. The fixation on consuming only so-called clean and wholesome food, pursued so rigidly that it undermines physical and mental health

Etymology: Orthopexy is a modern coinage, not an ancient word. It was created in 1997 by the American physician Steven Bratman, who wrote about the obsessive pursuit of "healthy" eating as a kind of disorder. He built the term from Greek roots: "orthos," meaning straight, correct or right, and "-pexy," from "pexis," meaning fixing or fastening. The second element is the same one found in "orthopedics," the medical field that deals with the musculoskeletal system, which is itself a coinage from the same Greek pair. Bratman's choice of this structure was a deliberate pun on the older word. Orthopedics literally means "straightening children," but Bratman used the parallel form to name a fixation on eating correctly, that is, on the right or pure diet. The term was meant as a clinical-sounding label for what he came to call orthorexia nervosa, a name he coined the same year for the condition itself. Note that the word as you have glossed it, "obsession with purity," matches its usage in discussions of food. Its meaning remains tied to that original context.