Unhealthy fixation on eating healthy food. The patient may avoid certain types of food, such as those containing fats, preservatives, or animal products. It is characterized by the pathological obsession for biologically pure food, which leads to important dietary restrictions. Patients exclude from their diets foods that they consider to be impure because the food contains herbicides, pesticides, or artificial substances. Patients also worry in excess about the techniques and materials used in the food preparation. This obsession leads to loss of social relationships that further favors obsessive concerns about food. There is a higher prevalence in men and in those with a lower level of education. In orthorexia, patients initially want to improve their health, treat a disease, or lose weight. Finally, the diet becomes the most important part of their lives. As a result, the sufferers may become as hazardously thin as those suffering from anorexia. This condition is probably as common as anorexia nervosa and bulimia.