The term ‘orthorexia nervosa’ was coined by physician Dr Steven Bratman in the late 1990s in the United States. In the book ‘Health food junkies. Orthorexia nervosa: overcoming the obsession with healthful eating’, the author proposed that ‘orthorexia nervosa refers to a fixation on eating healthy food’ (Bratman & Knight, 2000, p. 9). Despite 20 years of research and debate, as well as a variety of definitions, there is still no standard definition for orthorexia nervosa. The existence of an official definition of orthorexia nervosa remains crucial for several reasons: to know if its diagnosis should or should not be included in the classification systems, to distinguish between pathological and normal conditions and to recognise the condition that, as a result of its negative consequences, requires (medical or psychological) treatment (Telles-Correia, Saraiva & Gonçalves, 2018).