When most people think about “healthy eating”, they usually focus on what they eat. That might mean trying to eat more fruit and vegetables or less fast food, or counting calories.

But there’s a lot more to healthy eating than just dietary intake. Behaviours and attitudes around food are also important.

Take, for example, orthorexia nervosa, which is an obsessive preoccupation with consuming only “healthy” foods. If healthy eating only means ingesting healthy foods, then people with orthorexia are super healthy.

But people who live with this eating disorder often struggle with relationships and report poor quality of life, among other issues.

Research suggests that shifting the focus from food itself to our experience of eating can have a range of health benefits. Let’s take a look.

Why are we so obsessed with diet?

Equating “healthy eating” with “healthy diet” may have taken off in the early 1980s with panic over the “obesity epidemic” in Western countries – defined as a rapid rise in the prevalence of people in the population with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater.

But causes of obesity are complex and poorly understood, with numerous possible explanations beyond simply what a person eats. And admonishing overweight people to eat “healthier” has done nothing to reduce population rates of........

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