I am interrupting our usually positive programming to, well, complain for a minute. This article on “Orthorexia nervosa,” what some researchers are calling a new eating disorder, frustrates me.

Yes, the researchers are describing a troubling new trend in behavior, the result of individuals reacting to social trends in extreme, potentially destructive ways. And I suppose there’s some value to pointing out that a compulsive quest for food purity is probably not good behavior. It’s an extreme. Good health lies in balance.

But do we promote health by calling it an illness and creating a brand new victim class? Calling it an illness says, “I am by nature this, and I require [pills, therapy] to stop it.” It requires you to put trust in psychiatry, which in the big picture really doesn’t have a great track record for helping the mentally ill.

Sure, a therapist could help, if only by forcing you to spend some time every week thinking about your destructive behavior. But here’s another idea: Don’t burden the public health system with your neurosis. Instead buy a puppy. Exercise some discipline. Make a decision to change your thought patterns. Change your activities. Read books. I’m not pretending it’s easy, but I believe individuals can exercise more self-control than is commonly done.

I don’t deny that there are oftentimes underlying physical causes of behavior: I’m hypoglycemic and know very well what happens to “reason” and “identity” when the brain isn’t getting enough sugar.

I also know that in a therapeutic situation, the patient is hardly passive. He or she must do the work; the therapist is only the catalyst. The patient isn’t so much submitting to treatment as committing to it. (Then again, psychiatry’s definition for “committed” can include being thrown kicking and screaming into a padded cell. Words, words, words.)

And yet I can’t help my gut reaction: Really people, let’s toughen up! Revel in the fact that we have more power over our individual lives than anyone, ever, in human history.

Eh. Maybe that’s what’s unnatural.