Parents with kids that have ARFID - what are your kids safe foods? Safe meals?
Posted by jasilucy@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 49 comments
Hello all. What foods/meals do you use regularly at home for your kids? Specifically ingredients. I have looked at various subs but it doesn’t centre around classic british family home cooking.
My step son is 6, he isn’t diagnosed but suspect he has ARFID and I really want to look at trying to expand his diet. Preferably healthy too would be a huge bonus. He is highly suspicious of every food I place in front of him but I’ve given him absolutely no reason to as I’ve never lied or snuck anything in his food he did not expect and every food is specifically what he likes and is used to. I was hoping to use this trust to help expand his diet but to no avail. I’ve had him help me cook, feel and smell ingredients, smell and sometimes very rarely lick a bit of a new food but it never works.
Currently he doesn’t have the best diet and it mainly centres around pasta with tomato ketchup, tesco cheese packet pasta, fries, pizza, tinned spaghetti and sausages, sour cream and onion Pringles, hard boiled egg whites and cheddar cheese snack blocks which really isn’t the best but he’s started to put weight on which is positive and he no longer misses meals. We do give him 2 vitamins every morning to supplement his poor diet. He has orange juice and water daily too.
I know not everyone is the same that has ARFID but I’d be interested to see if there was a common food. He is quite adverse to sweet things and is definitely more savoury. I have tried to make home cooked versions of what he likes from tins or packets but to no avail. He doesn’t even like chocolate.
It would be nice occasionally to have a meal we all enjoy as a family together. I am hoping one day I can make a home cooked dinner for everyone’s tastes rather than make different meals for everyone. As you can imagine this is quite difficult with a lot of washing up too.
Look forward to your suggestions. Thank you
CarryturtleNZ@reddit
I think those kinds of foods are super common rn like same texture also same appearance every time. Easing off big changes helped us and working within what they already accept. We’d keep the same base foods and make small tweaks, like switching pasta shapes or slightly adjusting a sauce.
We also let go of the idea of everyone eating the same meal. That pressure just made things harder. Instead, we always included at least one safe food and let them choose what they were comfortable with. Over time, they started engaging with other foods without being pushed.
I still had concerns about nutrition, so we used Invinutri and mixed it into foods he already liked. It blends in with no taste or texture difference, so it didn’t set anything off. Has he ever gone along with even a small change to a food he already eats?
ronniealoha@reddit
This honestly sounds really typical for ARFID. Those foods you listed are almost exactly what a lot of kids stick to, same textures, same look every time. What helped us was not trying to push big changes. We kept the safe foods and just made tiny shifts, like a different pasta shape or slightly different sauce, nothing drastic.
We also stopped trying to force shared family meals. That pressure made everything worse. We just made sure there was always one safe food on the plate and let them decide what to touch or try. Over time, they got a bit more comfortable on their own.
I still worried about nutrition though, so we used InviNutri and mixed it into foods he already ate. No taste or texture change, so it didn’t trigger anything. Has he ever accepted even a small change to one of his safe foods?
Mental_Body_5496@reddit
Yup all sounders familiar.
Its food that is the same everytime.
Lots of hedge because possibly they are a super taster so everything is super spicy - what you think is a korma they think is a vindaloo!
As long as they eat something from eat food group try not to worry too much.
Picnic style meals are great 👍
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
Yeh my daughter can’t drink anything fizzy as she says it burns/is spicy.
OmegaSusan@reddit
I was like this as a kid - I wasn't an especially picky eater, but I hated fizzy drinks and salt and vinegar crisps because they "hurt my mouth". Texture and mouthfeel has a lot to do with it.
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
I stopped eating salt as a child, have had to reintroduce it but by not as an adult but I still don’t like meat that’s naturally salty like bacon
wildOldcheesecake@reddit
I cannot either! Well, I just find it burns but I know I called it spicy as a child as I didn’t have a better word for it. Since I enjoy the taste, I let it go flat or water mine down. But I don’t have ARFID
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
My daughter isn’t diagnosed either but does have a lot of food issues and I suspect if I pushed it with a gp she’d be diagnosed.
Mental_Body_5496@reddit
Not a GP diagnosis would be CAMHS and very unlikely to even get a referral unless down to like 10 foods !
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
Fair enough don’t really know anything about diagnosing it. She has other medical problems. Developed an autoimmune disease when she was 5 so she’s been in and out of hospitals and doctors for a long time, she eats enough that while it’s a worry for me she’s not unhealthy so it’s never been pushed as she has enough medical things to deal with. She has had a lot of stomach h problems as well over the years. Don’t really know how much is illness and how much is anxiety.
Mental_Body_5496@reddit
They are very much combined i think 🤔
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
It’s hard to say. My daughter sometimes has an enlarged spleen which could contribute a to her stomach problems. I have a lot of stomach problems but they are medical rather than anxiety. But she does have a lot of anxiety so who knows
Mental_Body_5496@reddit
Yes my daughter likes her fizzy pop flat.
ARFID is the extreme end of the wedge - i know adults that only eat 4 meals and that often doesn't include much fruit or veg !
jasilucy@reddit (OP)
What foods did she commonly have when she did eat?
Mental_Body_5496@reddit
Cucumber Celery carrot plain pasta plain rice chicken.nuggets chicken ham grated cheese crackers chips home made mash with cheese and cream turkey escalopes crisps ketchup - pretty much the same !
SquigSnuggler@reddit
If your kid eats all those things I seriously doubt he has ARFID.
My son is also not diagnosed but eats 2 meals - chicken nuggets and pizza. That’s it.
HeavenDraven@reddit
You know it has degrees of severity, right? And isn't a competition to see who is worse.
pirateshipsx@reddit
As an adult diagnosed with ARFID, it's not about the quantity of food you're restricted to. Stop trying to dictate what others experience just because yours only eats two foods. It's not a competition.
Successful-Tune2225@reddit
I know right! That sounds like a typical child, my daughter is 9 and most of her friends are fussy.
I've wondered if my daughter has ARFID. For dinner she will only have chips, waffles, nuggets, burger, popcorn chicken (frozen crap). Noodles with soy sauce, pasta & grated cheese and garlic bread. She refuses bread, crumpets, toast, eggs, milk (unless in cereal). She used to be slightly better, the older she gets the less foods she will eat.
TheBikerMidwife@reddit
Slimfast (actually only about 30 calories less than build up and is fortified with vitamins and minerals). Chicken nuggets (only the Iceland or Tesco ones), thin cut chips, bovril, toast, Gouda and ham toasties, Pringles, strawberries, he’s okay with certain sweets.
He’ll also eat homemade chicken nuggets so I add feta to those but he can’t eat it on its own.
HeavenDraven@reddit
Slimfast is often cheaper and tastes better than Buildup or Complan! Plus, it works really well with oat or sweetened soya milk if cow's milk is a problem.
As an aside, it's also brilliant if you/your kid has teeth problems, or really bad IBS, and unopened cans of powder have really long dates - I went through a chunk of time with a couple of nasty tooth accesses, and an infected dry socket over the course of a couple of months, had a can left over, and it literally just sat in the cupboard for a couple of years because it would escape being chucked out because it was still in date!
kateykatey@reddit
My son will eat weetabix, hash browns and crisps. It’s rough. But you can see his physical aversion to other textures and foods - smell is really offputting to him as well. He recoils, curls up, gags at the thought.
My brother in law once sat with him for about an hour with a chopped red pepper between them and gently coached him to take a bite, which he eventually did, but the next day I tried to give him a chopped green pepper as a snack and no, doesn’t want it anymore.
Soul destroying.
Suspicious_Tax8577@reddit
to be fair to your son, red and green peppers taste completely different (and imho, green peppers are vile)
mo_oemi@reddit
You might have to forget home made for a while, because it needs to have the exact same taste and texture, and only factory made food would be like that.
Maybe you could explore some cereals like Weetabix or cornflake, try to get used to dry/crunchy and wet/soggy? How about yogurt and smooth peanut butter? Or a ham sandwich?
It might be a bit of a stretch but of all the vegetables I found that cucumber and red peppers (eaten raw) always have the same taste, as opposed to fruits like berries or even banana which can vary a lot based on ripeness.
Suspicious_Tax8577@reddit
If OP's wean can't do wet/soggy/slimy, weetabix is not going to happen. I possibly have something approximating ARFID, if not severe textural sensitivities, and the shear thought of soggy weetabix makes me retch.
InternationalRich150@reddit
Im pretty sure i have Arfid. As a child my diet consisted of Alphabites, those tinned pasta shape things, dry unbuttered bread rolls with a crusty outer and munch bunch yoghurt. Toast had to have the slightest scraping of butter and then id have to fold it over so I couldn't taste the butter.
As an adult,it got better somewhat. But I'm 46 and still have a list of "safe" foods. I can eat peas and carrots on a roast but only with meat. I can eat a small portion of ready made mash. I learnt years ago how to eat spaghetti bolegnaise without eating too much mince(its too "beefy") and mostly enjoy the pasta.
I think I'm more sensory led,i dont like rice. I hate pizza,although I love bread. I dont like cheese but can eat a cheese burger. Im not a fan of anything fishy but love fishcakes. Pastry is gorgeous.
For me it was to never make a fuss of what I do and dont eat. Like,I'm eating and that's enough. I'll stick to a meal for ages and then I'll go off it and choose something else. Its just how my brain works.
I get its annoying,it annoys me. I dread being asked out for dinner cause then I have to explain why I can't eat that Chinese,or Indian. Although I did Malaysian once which was massive for me. But I remember a point where it became such a big issue,I was forced to eat foods I didn't like(boiled potatoes still give me chills) that i just stopped eating.
Im 46 so i was just considered awkward or attention seeking as a child,but it was really hard having all these grown ups telling me food needed to be suffered rather than enjoyed.
TytoCwtch@reddit
The bit about only having veg with meat is so relatable. One of my favourite safe meals is plain chicken breast, mashed potatoes, peas, corn and carrots (cut into small chunks roughly the same size as the peas and corn). I will happily eat chicken on its own, or chicken with potatoes, or chicken with potatoes and veg. But I cannot eat potatoes or veg on their own, or chicken with just veg.
I’m 38 and had a similar upbringing with post war grandparents with the attitude of ‘you must finish what’s on your plate’. My parents were told so many times just to leave me and I’ll eventually eat when I get hungry. I ended up needing medical intervention for malnourishment.
Suspicious_Tax8577@reddit
I think I got very lucky with my paternal grandma. "Eat what you want, leave what you don't, but you don't get to ask me to cook something special, take two bites and leave it".
InternationalRich150@reddit
Yes,I'm fussy about carrots. Weird thing but i only enjoy baby carrots. Yep,exact same. I need the combination to enjoy it. Lumpy gravy also puts me off to the degree I put it through a sieve.
Its definitely mental,i can't explain it and it's not being fussy or picky. I jusy can't break that mental block and I physically gag. I can't eat food thats been exposed to the "air",i can't drink milk neat,but i enjoy a milkshake. Soup is a massive no,ive tried everything and i just can't. I remember when I was pregnant and my blood sugars dropped to 2.1 and they gave me a banana. I gagged eating it because the texture was just beyond me. They look so dry,but for me it's akin to what id imagine a slug would feel like.
jugsmacguyver@reddit
My 10 year old nephew has diagnosed ARFID and autism. His diet is very restrictive and currently consists of mostly Tesco mozzarella sticks.
My sister has got him into a routine of having the baby fruit pouches every day so he gets his fibre etc from those plus a good kids multivitamin.
His specialists basically said that him eating is more important than what he's eating as if there's no "safe" food he will just not eat at all and he was underweight at one point. We are all very relaxed about food around him and never make a big deal about it. Sometimes he's interested in the food we have and we just tell him he can try it if he wants to and hide our excitement 🤣 that's how he started eating pizza express doughballs.
Ironically his little brother is basically a goat and will eat absolutely anything you put in front of him.
Looking back, I definitely had ARFID as a child. I had a very restrictive diet and it drove my poor mother mad. I didn't eat pizza until after I left home. I still have a lot of things I can't stand but I eat much better now I'm an adult.
Material_Bowl_7484@reddit
Maybe include him in some grocery shopping & cooking ? it might make him feel more empowered & will take some of the pressure off you both if he starts being involved in the process rather than you having to prepare & present endless dishes he feels suspicious off/doesn't like. My teen is Autistic with ADHD & has some very interesting sensory issues with food, including them in how it gets from supermarket to plate helped them feel like they were co-producers & alleviated some of the tension that comes from having to 'get it right' at mealtimes
cretinassemble@reddit
My step son has arfid, doesn’t eat a lot at all really but one thing that I found that worked well is because he liked pizza I made a pizza on a wrap then moved on to a Quesadilla and I can get away with hiding some really really chopped up veg in there
JoeDaStudd@reddit
Ignoring everything food related what vitamins are you giving him?\ Too many vitamins can be as bad as too few, it's easy to overdose and make yourself unwell.
In terms of food have you tried it in a peer setting?\ Playdate or party with kids his aged. If he see other kids his age trying and enjoying new food he's more likely to at least try it.
Apprehensive-Cat-500@reddit
If only it were that simple! For many children that is a great suggestion, and they are more inclined to try things in a social setting.
But with my son's flavour of arfid, seeing other people eat different foods really bothers him and turns him off trying that food even more.
He used to have a wider list of safe foods. Then, eating them around others at primary school put them on the will not touch list!
1nkSprite@reddit
If he'll have pasta with tomato ketchup, then I have a suggestion for you to try.
My autistic youngest has a reasonably restricted diet, but I've found certain combos he likes that ensure he gets at least some fruit and veg. One thing he likes is the 'tomato sauce' I make him.
It's baked sweet potato (baked for long enough it's really soft and sweet) mashed well and mixed with tomato puree. For him I also add a tiny squeeze of garlic pasta, a pinch of salt, and some dried basil and thyme. But you don't have to add any of the extras.
It's a pretty smooth texture (you can even run it through a blender or food processor to get it even smoother), and fairly consistent taste. It might be close enough to ketchup that he likes it?
I bake up a load of sweet potatoes at a time, mash them, and then freeze the mash in ice cube trays, so I can just pop out a few cubes as and when I need them.
ceb1995@reddit
Son doesn't have an arfid diagnosis (our area doesn't give them anyway) but is autistic with a bit of a restricted diet, it seems to come down to either a juicy fruit or a plain beige or crunchy option.
He eats; Chicken nuggets and fries (McDonald's or at home they have to be air fried) Croissants, pan au chocolat or chocolate twists Plain brown bread Teddy bear crisps (only the Aldi ones) Dry Cheerios Gingerbread man Then any juicy fruits from any kinds of melon, to pears, oranges or apples ( we spend £20 a week on fruit just for him 😂).
We recently convinced him to try popcorn chicken successfully but it feels like his diet changed overnight 3 years ago and we haven't made much progress since then.
Fortunately he's a good weight which means we can't have him seen by a dietician on the NHS and his new school teacher at SEN school for next month has said his diets good in comparison to what she usually sees which was comforting.
charlottie22@reddit
My daughter is AFRID we suspect. At least treating her as if she is has definitely helped. The book we read( Gillian Harris- food refusal in kids- highly recommend!) suggested at about 8 a lot of ARFID kids will start to broaden their diets and we are seeing that, a taste of something new, curiosity, licking a sweet( seriously a massive win if you have an ARFID kid 😆).
In the past we found it takes about a year to introduce new foods so it’s painstaking but we have a few decent safe meals now.
Porridge with milk and honey Jacket potato with baked beans and grated cheese ( only mild/ medium cheddar) Pasta with passata, tuna fish and grated cheese Rice salmon broccoli and avocado Fishfingers and chips Homemade pizza- wholemeal pitta bread, passata and grated cheese A few different types of breakfast cereal
For snacks she will eat banana and apple ( only if cut up), crackers with one specific type of butter spread, mini cheddars, rice cake with butter, a spoonful of peanut butter, cucumber and carrot, gallons of milk, just gallons
Sounds like a lot but basically this is the diet she had as a toddler. The only foods we’ve been able to properly introduce since then are the salmon and baked beans. With a lot of time and care we have got her to a place where she will eat a couple of bites of plain chicken as well and also some dark chocolate, which is a good source of protein.
We realised early on that she really doesn’t have a sweet tooth so she is better with veg than fruit and thankfully she hates sweets and most cake so apart from a couple of types of biscuit.
A good lesson from Gillian Harris’s book is that no food is junk food for ARFID kids. If your kid likes crisps for example, let them have them and encourage them to try subtly different flavours as a way of opening their palette. We do it with pasta for my dsughter - different shapes can honestly send her spinning.
Good luck and remember it’s a marathon and you are doing great as long as meal times feel safe and calm
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
Not diagnosed with ARFID but I have a super fussy child. She was great up to age 1 when she choked on a piece of chicken and since then stopped eating a lot of things. Then got braces which cut even more if her safe foods as she couldn’t have anything chewy.
I am a pastry chef but started my career as a regular chef. I can cook really good food and have done for both of my kids. I do wonder if be keeping her away from junk food when she was small was some of the problem. Despite being a chef her favourite dinner is plain dry pasta, with sausages and sweetcorn. My son drenches his in ketchup, but doesn’t particularly love other sauces either. He will sometimes have cheese she will not eat cheese.
List of things she will eat:
Tesco microwave chicken and bacon pasta bake
Homemade tuna pasta
Spaghetti bolognese
Duck breast which she will only eat with pasta
Garlic bread
Ham
Bread buns but with no butter and will not eat ham in it, has to have it on the side
Cornflakes but dry without milk
Fruit, oranges, pineapple, mango and strawberries, but has to have them in separate bowls if she has more than one fruit. Oranges are only as an evening snack and she has to literally be starving to eat one during the day.
Vegetables, peas, carrots, peppers and sweetcorn
Mini sausages cold
Will eat most chocolate
Is funny about ice cream and only likes specific ones
Will eat one type of crisp only that you can only buy in Ireland where we are from
We home bake a lot but again she only has about 5 things that she likes to cycle through
Things she won’t eat that most kids will
Pizza
Chips
Fizzy drinks of any description, the only drinks she will have are water, hot chocolate and orange juice
Burgers
Sliced bread
Anything even mildly spicy (she did eat curry until around age 4 but we just seem to lose food year by year)
Nuggets
Butter (will only eat if if it’s on warm crusty bread and melted)
Rice
Potatoes mostly, can stomach some mash but sometimes just hits a mouthful that makes her want to vomit and that’s it for that day with potato
She does eat pretty healthily which is something, eats a lot of portions of fruit and veg and drinks a lot of water. But going places with her is a nightmare. Travelling I usually pack her food or if I can’t for some reason I usually have to try find an M&S or Tesco to buy her bread and sausages as she won’t eat fast food. Birthday parties as a child I would always have to feed her before or after going and her own parties while her friends eat take out she has a Tesco pasta bake.
Also just spent 10 days ag home in Ireland and I think she ate Tesco pasta 8 out of 10 days because she won’t eat my mothers cooking.
My daughter is 16 now. I do worry about her going to uni and dropping even more of her current safe foods.
That said I was about as bad as her as a teen and even through my early 20s. It wasn’t until I took a chef job aged 30 that I really got better as I worked 12 hour days and commuted. We had dinner provided on the job but it was one thing every day and it was a case of eat it or starve. It really helped me broaden my tastes.
My sister had taken me out for lunch when I was 12 and told me to have anything I wanted so I had a plain dry bread roll. I hated my food touching as a child and I am currently going through the autism diagnosis process. My food touching genuinely made me upset as a child. This has led me to also not force things so much with my daughter as I understand how genuinely upsetting food can be, but I do feel guilt over it as maybe if I’d pushed back a bit she’d eat more than she does now.
jasilucy@reddit (OP)
Oh my gosh thank you so much for all of this. It’s been really helpful!
-myeyeshaveseenyou-@reddit
No problem.
I do suspect both of my kids are probably neurodivergent also. I will say out of me their dad and them that my daughter is probably least so until it comes to food. We do talk about it pretty openly. She knows I used to struggle a lot too.
My daughter is also lactose intolerant and her dropping food coincided with her being weaned onto cow milk, we didn’t know at the time she was lactose intolerant. It could also be irrelevant. She had tummy problems pretty much since birth and would vomit up a large amount of her feeds. Gp told me I was a first time worrying mum. My son was even worse and started losing weight from the vomiting and was hospitalised twice. Turns out I’m also intolerant to a bunch of stuff and had to cut things from my diet to feed him as I was making a lot of antibodies and triggering an allergy response in my son. It’s not ideal to have to cut out foods when you are already limited but my daughter eats very little dairy. She started to refuse milk very early on herself once weaned and I’m pretty sure she related it to hurting her even at age 1.
My daughter does also suffer with anxiety around a lot of things and is prone to breakdowns in school.
I wish I could make her world easier but it’s definitely a reason why I don’t argue with her over food either. I can imagine arguing over it would probably just make things worse all round. I am lucky in that she does eat healthy most of the time but I do also like you sometimes cook her separate dinners. This evening my son and I will have steak and she will have tuna pasta. I do batch cook the pasta sauce so that I don’t have mountains of washing up every week and that helps make it more manageable
himit@reddit
Also probably had arfid as a kid. I pretty much survived on turkey dinosaurs, chips, omelettes, and fruit. Sausages, but only if cut correctly.
What worked was zero pressure. No "aw why don't you just try it?" or "yay! well done for trying!" - both of those add pressure. Once I moved out and people stopped looking at what I was eating, I started eating way more things and now I'm kind of a foodie.
ch536@reddit
I'm fairly confident that my 6yo has ARFID. Something that has worked really well for me is firstly the 'food fairy' who comes and delivers a chocolate or pound under her pillow if she has 5 bites of a new food. This incentive has been helped a lot. The second thing is that I showed her a photo of different coloured foods which say things like 'blue foods give you a strong brain', 'white foods give you energy'. It is better than saying something like just eat it because it is good for you. She was really interested in this!
Her breakfast is usually a packet of crisps and a pan au chocolate or a crepe.
Her lunch is usually crackers, cheese string, yoghurt, mini sausage rolls/chicken bites if she's at school. At home it will be similar but she might have a butter/grated cheese/ham sandwich instead with a sweet treat like a jam tart.
Her dinner is usually nuggets/figh fingers/sausages/turkey dinosaurs and waffles or ABC bites or chips. She will eat cucumber, celery, raw carrots and raw pepper with it.
For fruit she will only eat apples, bananas and blueberries.
She will now eat roast or buttered chicken and Yorkshire puddings and sometimes she will eat plain pasta.
I think her problem specifically is that she won't eat anything that's got a wetness or a sauce to it. Getting her to try something like spaghetti bolognase made her heave badly. Same with things like tomato ketchup.
She is improving slowly. I think it's best to completely lower your expectations of a family meal where you all eat the same thing. If you are having a roast then try him with one new food separated off with all his other safe food at the same time. Start this way
JaBe68@reddit
My 27 year old was very restricted up until her teenage years. She is now more adventurous but still zero fruit and only 3 vegetables on her list. We have tailored family meals around what she eats so that at least half of the food is OK for her. She is trying really hard to broaden her palate, so she cooks a fair bit. She will cook a creamy pasta sauce with crab, shrimp, sweet pepper, onion, and mushroom. And then she will pick out everything except the crab sticks and pasta.
Spottyjamie@reddit
Beige!!
SnooSprouts9951@reddit
I had terrible food aversions as a child, to the extent that I wouldn’t even eat things like pasta or pizza (basically if we went anywhere that didn’t have chicken nuggets and chips on the menu, it was going to be a disaster) so he sounds in a better position than I was, just to reassure you! Absolutely nothing worked to get rid of them until I got into my late teens and decided to go vegetarian. I can’t explain what it was but I started being more adventurous after this and I ate foods I could never have even dreamed of trying before. Perhaps it was having the autonomy over what I ate (as I started cooking for myself because no one else in my family was vegetarian)? This isn’t to advocate for putting him on a vegetarian diet as ironically I’m not even veggie anymore, but I think age does play a huge factor and also finding a reason to actually be interested in what you’re eating (which may be easier said than done)
I still have a lot of food aversions but nothing that stops me eating a balanced diet!
jasilucy@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the suggestions all. Me, my partner and siblings all went through this until we got older and started having meals at friends and seeing what others ate. This encouraged myself personally to try more foods.
I stupidly presumed he would be going through similar but it’s to extremes. Couple of years ago he wouldn’t eat at all and would get so stressed and anxious about it. He would go to bed obviously starving and have horrific reflux. We keep thinking perhaps he will grow out of it slightly but any opportunity that would have worked for us years ago, is still a hard no.
DameKumquat@reddit
My 17yo is nearly 6 foot, incredibly healthy. and eats fewer things than that. Apart from ketchup (low salt/sugar) and one specific brand/flavour of smoothie, and apple juice and a little jam, he's had no fruit or veg in a decade. Peanut butter is OK, plus every type of bread. So we can go for a curry and he'll eat naan, poppadoms, roti etc. Custard buns and tarts for dim sum. Yorkshires when we have roast dinner. Potato dumplings, pasta, or toast for most other meals, which he will now cook himself.
He will now have cheese on toast when feeling relaxed, and very rarely, plain omelette. He's increasingly had mouthfuls of other foods in the last couple years, but not liked any. Anything not 'moist' nor with 'bits' he will choke down if motivated.
His dad thinks he'll do what he did - hit 18, decide he wants a girlfriend, and start paying attention to his looks and hygiene and eating habits. The kid is already washing and wearing decent clothes, so could be worse.
apeliott@reddit
I believe I had ARFID as a kid, but it wasn't a recognised condition back then.
I ate a lot of bread and butter, mashed potatoes, chips, lentil soup, onion rings, soft boiled eggs, fruit, and I drank a lot of milk.
In my late 20s I finally started eating meat, cheese, fish, ramen, dumplings, and several other things.
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