Help with 6 year old not eating

Will she eat pureed stuff or even baby food pouches of spaghetti bol etc

@Summertimewoes no idea about hypnotherapy.

I would image maybe a clinic in London could have a specialism in it?

Have you tried to give her a liquid multivitamin and mineral supplement?

Maybe try making a smoothie and filling the empty innocent bottle so she thinks it’s from that brand.

For optimum nutrition I’d try a banana, strawberries, a tbsp flaxseed (cannot taste it at all), apple juice/milk, scoop of Nuzest Vanilla protein powder (it’s a protein powder that it not full of nasties like some others and you can buy sachets to give it a try)

Your creativity is excellent! So sorry it’s not working. You’re a fabulous parent and there will be a solution, hope you‘ve been able to pick up some help from this thread.

Ottolenghi has a cauliflower cake that is very nice and could maybe be adapted. Or try some vegetable savoury muffins or a cornbread?

@Summertimewoes I completely relate to you and your daughter. I have two boys, and the youngest one DS12 is under a dietician as he is below the 1st centile for weight. They have given us every type of high calorie drink and milkshake to try, but all they do is make him feel sick and then less likely to eat, so we have stopped trying those. The dietician has advised just to increase portion sizes of things he does eat (bread buns, toast, bananas, Wildlife yoghurts, Ritz crackers) and introduce food chaining as has already been mentioned. I do manage to get some other things into him in the form of a cake that I bake (again, mentioned lots of times above!) which has lots of eggs and butter, and I have recently added in grated carrot, and also courgette. Even though he seems to lean towards sweet food, he doesn't like things too sweet, so I use about half the brown sugar in the recipe for this cake so it's semi-savoury, and he likes it. I even made some to take on holiday with us recently, and he lived on that and bread buns and bananas from a nearby Lidl. Unfortunately his older brother DS16 is pretty much the same. Whereas DS12 lives on bread, DS16 lives on potato products. I definitely think they both have ARFID, and dietician agrees, but I can't see any solution in changing this for either of them without some kind of hypnotherapy or other mental health intervention. They are both desperate to eat normally and want to put weight on, it's not that they're restricting themselves on purpose.
If it's any consolation, DS16 is a strapping 6'3" although on the skinny side, and has today got a great set of GCSE results, so they do manage to get on in life! I do hope you manage to find some help OP.

I don't think it's good to talk about food being "crap" or "healthy".
The first purpose of eating is to get energy. Your kid's diet may not be perfect, but getting the calories in is a good start.

Do you have an eating disorder team you can get referred to? I know in my area, they only takes kids from 8 onwards.

In the meantime, has anyone suggested shakes like ensure? Paed of GP can prescribe.

If she‘ll ask for bolognese, could you purée a portion for her?

This was me as a child. My parents didn't know that much about nutrition so they weren't that bothered as long as I was eating something. I subsided on UPFs and junk food for years but was ironically underweight because I didn't actually eat huge portions. One chocolate bar or one bag of crisps was a meal.

If it's any consolation, I had a wake-up call after two health scares as an adult. I overhauled my diet completely and started eating 5 portions of fruit & veg with low sugar, low carb and low UPF. I enjoy cooking and make as much as I can from scratch. I obviously feel much better than when I was just living off sugar. I still have some "background noise" of emetophobia, for instance I love fruits and veg but I will prepare it myself at home instead of buying those pre-packaged salads or raw fruit salad. I tend to eat less at other people's homes when I'm not 100% sure about the hygiene standards but on the whole it doesn't affect my life to any significant extent. I do eat enough variety that nobody ever suspects I have issues with food.

Is there any chance she might be emetophobic? As a PP mentioned, a lot of those safe foods and tiny portions are typical of emetophobes, or a fear of vomiting. The choking incident might be triggered the fear of thinking she might be sick, rather than the stress of choking in itself. Emetophobia frequently overlaps with Audhd & ARFID, as many of the thought patterns are typical of neurodivergent thinking.

6 is young but not hugely so. My phobia started about age 7 and I already started limiting portions at that age. Sometimes I would secretly spit out food I already chewed because something in my head told it wasn't safe or might make me sick. I never admitted the true fear to anyone, so from the outside it would easily appear like arfid, anorexia or ednos.

You could broach the subject by saying which foods are good for your tummy or that having some food in your tummy actually prevents you from feeling or being sick. Start with the BRAT foods that people might typically eat after being ill. White carbs, bananas, soups, potatoes etc. The goal is to encourage her to eat more as get used to the feeling of being full. Again, it might not have that much to do with the choking but in the aftermath, she's developed an aversion to the feeling of fullness because it reminds her she might be sick. During the worst phases of my phobia, I had to be hungry at all times because the feeling of fullness would make me too anxious or trigger panic.

She might even be too young to articulate exactly what she's afraid of. Try approaching it from an emetophobic perspective and keep emphasising how some foods are good for your tummy, won't give you a tummy ache and helps your body fight off germs that might make you sick. Something along those lines and see if that makes a difference.

EDIT: I underwent therapy in my 20s and now have a completely normal diet and body weight. I love food, cooking and eating out at restaurants. I'm only a bit fussy about expiry dates and don't eat things like raw oysters but aside from that the phobia has almost no impact on my life.

A bit outside the box with this suggestion but is hypnotherapy worth trying?

She clearly wants to eat her usual safe foods but feels physically unable.