ND 'quirky' 'food rules'

[TyneTeas]

What are yours?

Are any of these ones you aren't bothered by? And are any of these at odds with yours?

(We are all different!)

Thought this might be potentially an interesting thread both for ND MNers to compare their 'food rules' and also may even be helpful to parents of ND kids to have some insight if their kids can't articulate why

And also when does a preference become a food rule… why is it okay to specify how you want your steak cooked but not other things…? (I remember being quite confused and actually distressed as a child that I was thought to be unreasonably fussy by expressing a preference for how toasted my toast was or about how cooked or soft for scrambled eggs in comparison to preferences steak)

As the person in our house who does most of the food prep and cooking, I just automatically do things to my preferences without thinking about that they may be 'quirky' so interested to see any that I maybe do but haven't noticed or are different to mine…

Sliced tomatoes (wrong) taste different to wedged tomatoes (right). They do. (And if tomatoes are too ripe they are inedible as the texture is wrong.)

Hot and cold things don't go together until the last minute. So eg a cold filling for a baked potato can't sit in a hot baked potato getting hot, you just take a scoop of the separate filling and the baked potato when you eat it. So I will have eg tuna mayonnaise or prawn cocktail on the side of a baked potato but ideally not in it.

Also. Don't put salad in a burger. Lettuce and tomato is best eaten cold, not burger-wilted!

Sauces and juices should not usually soak into carbs. So rice at one side of the bowl, curry/chilli/whatever at the other. Then eat down the border if rice. Or maybe deploy a few sacrificial chips as a barrier to stop the rest of the chips getting sogged.

Chips (British chips) should be rectangular. DH and the DC have never noticed that the ratio of curved chips they have is disproportionate.) I don't know why curved chips are wrong. They just are.

Custard, cream and ice cream should be served separately to cake, pudding cheesecake etc. It cools it down and changes the texture and makes it soggy. No.

Gravy is brilliant (I could eat gravy like soup) but not over everything. Roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings and stuffing need to take shelter on the rim of the plate or on top of the meat and veg like they are playing tiggy on high until you are ready to dip them in the gravy (or even have a side bowl for the gravy)

I am sure I have loads more but can't think of any more off hand...

DD doesn't like unexpectedly lumpy textures, loves smooth orange juice won't touch orange with bits in. Porridge is OK if it has chopped fruit and other bits in to give it some substance but just normal lumpy porridge is out as is rice pudding - again fine if it has 'proper' chunks of fruit
.

She likes gravy the side of eating anything with pastry ie a pie so that she can dip but it doesn't go soggy.

I agree with everything on you list except I have never noticed curved chips and I like gravy over everything.

I am much less fussy than I used to be but I still don't like my food to touch if at all possible.

I would never have a cold filling with a jacket potato, I actually recoiled in horror at the very idea of it!

As far as I know I am NT but with quirks. DH describes me a much more normal than I used to be.

My ND DS has the cure to your gravy issue - he has a Gu ramekin full of gravy and takes the food over to it to be wettened rather than contaminate the entire plate.

My ds’s are both diagnosed ND, one has to smell everything before he eats it, also very bothered by textures and has about 5 meals he eats on rotation. They will both try new things if eating out, but not at home, so we always get out money’s worth at an all inclusive restaurant.

I will eat the same thing for lunch for months at a time. And then suddenly change to something else. My ex wouldn’t eat rice or pasta two days in a row, even if a different meal (so Chinese one night and Indian then next).

my ND daughter will eat the same thing for weeks, usually until I bulk buy and then goes off it 😂

Just realised I have an exception to the hot/cold thing, I am perfectly happy to drink hot chocolate through a layer of whipped cream

Somebody said about there needing to be a balance of textures otherwise the food is completely inedible. I think that's hitting the nail on the head for me. That's why the gravy thing is wrong and it has to be in a separate bowl/ pot so everything doesn't end up soggy. And why cereal is only edible for roughly ten seconds after the milk is poured over it, why it's such an awful idea to pour custard over things, and why so-called foods such as porridge and trifle are an abomination as they consist only of an entire bowl of sogginess.

Another PP was absolutely right, that the difference between these things and normal preferences is that I literally cannot eat things that are "wrong", rather than just not being keen on them.

Also have a magnified sense of taste and smell which is brilliant for nice foods, but probably leads to some of the aversions e.g. I cannot eat or drink anything that is bitter, it will make me throw up. Gin, grapefruit, all just bluuuurgh 🤢🤮

It does get fun when you have several ND people in the house to cater for, doesn't it?! 🤣

Does anybody who prefers their foods separate use those plates with different sections?

i bought these for teen with ASD a couple of weeks ago.

Gamechanger as he cannot tolerate food touching each other. Even better- the round bit fits a perfect hamburger and because he wants each compartment to be filled I can put some raw veg sticks in and he will eat them.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unbreakable-Divided-AIYoo-Dishwasher-Training/dp/B09GTR856N/ref=sr_1_19?crid=1NVNU8I6DL678&keywords=food+plates+divided+adults&qid=1681126530&sprefix=food+plates+divided+adults%2Caps%2C128&sr=8-19

To those saying it doesn’t make you ND/lots of people do those things. It’s not so much the ‘thing’ itself that shows someone is ND but more the behaviour of it goes wrong. So lots of NT would still eat the soggy roast potato, or warm jacket potato filling or other ‘wrong’ food. But for someone who is ND they may gag or vomit, or have a meltdown or just flat out refuse to eat it and genuinely would rather go hungry indefinitely than eat the wrong food.

DD cannot stand sauces (gravy is acceptable but not on veg) or things touching or mixing, especially in a lunchbox. So if peppers have been near cucumber she says it makes it taste and smell funny and she can’t eat them (she has a lunchbox with separate compartments). She doesn’t like spices as even the slightest spice and she says her mouth is burning.

And lots of very specific things, potato is only acceptable in mashed form or waffles (birds eye waffles are wrong but Tesco are fine). Most chicken nuggets/dippers are fine but we recently went somewhere that had a tempura style batter on them and she couldn’t eat them. So eating out can be tricky. There’s quite a lot of things like that but they just seem normal to me now.

She does love all fruit and veg though so I’m really lucky there. She will happily sit and snack on a bowl of cucumber and carrot sticks and frequently asks for broccoli for breakfast.

Oh and sandwiches are a complete no go because of the touching.

She doesn’t like spices as even the slightest spice and she says her mouth is burning.

My son is like this too. And I don't mean with chilli, I mean that if just a couple of twists of pepper were added to a meal during cooking he can still taste it in his portion and drinks gallons of water and says it burns. 😟

My DD is so specific in the food she likes and can taste the difference between different brands - e.g. she loves sainsburys garlic Mayo and has it on everything but can’t stand Tesco, Hellman’s or any other brand. They taste exactly the same to me 🤷‍♀️.

She also doesn’t like sandwiches as a rule, would never eat one at home, but loves Sainsburys prepacked ham and mustard sandwich - won’t eat the same sandwich from any other shop.

Luckily she is an excellent cook, and will eat a decent range of meals, as long as they are made from scratch and cooked by her.

I have to check every single chip to make sure there's potato in the middle that's soft. Otherwise I can't eat it.

Although my ds is much more harder to please.
Cold toast or hot toast. Must not look cooked. Small amount of butter. Crust off cut into squares.
Anaemic looking sausages.
Pizza with pepperoni cooked on it. Then every little bit must be removed.
Iced donuts. Must be the pink icing with sprinkles. No other colour is allowed.

She also can’t stand fizzy drinks - she says the bubbles popping hurt her mouth!

Same.

Most of this applies to children, too, though some don't grow out of it. Ahem

Same with mine!!

At a proper dinner these things would mostly be respected though. Like the waiter would ask how to do the steak, but yes they would also ask how your egg is to be done (uh, if they serve it at all) and you would get a small gravy boat on the side of your plate and the fries would be a uniform shape and so on.

(I have yet to have a formal dinner in which I am asked to eat a burger so no opinion on the lettuce though!)

So I don't think it's that these things are not standard, they by and large are in fancy settings. Whether people bother with them at home depends I guess on their fussiness and priorities.

Same, I've had hot wings for dinner for the last 8 days, nothing else seems to take my fancy and one day I'll sit down to them and the smell will make me want to vomit 🤦‍♀️

None of those sound quirky to be honest. Places serve stuff like salad with a burger not because the majority like it but because its a cheapish way to make the meal seem more impressive and they can charge more- when I worked in hospitality most people asked for it without or just for certain bits. Tomato wedges do taste different than slices as the outer bit and the insides are a different ratio.

DD won't eat off of plastic plates says it reminds her of small children with food all over their faces. Also doesn't like seeing others eat so we rarely use the table now or sit next to each other instead of opposite. If we go to restaurants she sits with her back to the room as much as possible to avoid seeing others eat. Won't enter a McDonald's type place / school diner as noise + food = hell on earth.

I've just realised I dont have any food rules at all which probably accounts for why I am so overweight.

Yes I also agree that cereal is only edible for seconds after the milk goes on. I have a specific bowl I will use otherwise the milk to cereal ratio is just wrong. And I also can't bear watching others eating cereal after it has gone soggy as the thought of the texture is too much

Does anyone else have an issue with food not being hot enough? I don't mean spicy, it's the temperature it's served at. I almost always find my food is too cold for me to eat it, its perfect for others but I'd gag if I tried to eat it, also find it absolutely tasteless unless steaming hot. At home I usually microwave my portion before sitting down to eat it, if anyone else eats from my plate they complain of being burnt. Its led to places I just won't eat in because despite explaining politely when ordering the food still arrived not hot enough, I'd love to know if there is a scientific explanation as to why I find it tasteless, my mother was the same, I'm also able to handle hot plates etc that others would drop, husband won't put his hands in to the sink if I'm washing dishes because he says it burns him, my baths are also hotter than average I've been told but I've stopped them because I read that it not good for you.

@Doggydarling yes, my mother. She's obsessed with trying to zap everyone's food in the microwave, having plates too hot to touch and nagging that everyone must hurry up otherwise their food will be too cold.

I find super hot food inedible and of course tasteless because it's too hot to chew or swallow.