SEN/safe food

[Frangipani2]

I am going to preface this by saying this is in no way a criticism and I will never be able to fully understand as I don’t have a SEN child.

i fully can understand some children have safe foods my question is surrounding the food. How do people find what these foods are and why are this usually ’junk’ food. I can understand why fresh fruit might be a no go as each piece can vary so much.

But how can chicken nuggets be ok but prices of chicken not?

i understand I am hugely generalising but it does seem to be a common theme that safe foods are usually junk just wondered if anyone can give a explanation as to why this is.

I imagine a lot of it is parents trying different things in desperation to find something the child will actually eat.

As to why it’s so often junk food, a lot of junk food is deliberately created to be exactly the same each time. So a chicken nugget will have exactly the same texture, flavour etc as another chicken nugget of the same brand. With pieces of chicken they can be more or less tender, taste and look slightly different from each other.

I think it's about sameness and predictability. Although DS won't eat any meat at all and DD eats chicken, sausages and steak as well as KFC style chicken (both autistic with limited diets).

4 DC, 2 with autism, DS1(19) eats only beige coloured food. Both only eat dry food,so no sauces, gravy, rice, pasta, fruit veg etc. DS2 (16)only eats on certain coloured plates and struggles with cutlery. Both doing amazing witu work/school and over 6ft, no fillings and have vitamins.

Completely understand the need for the sameness, which isn’t possible to achieve with fresh food. I fully appreciate by the it’s better that a child eats something than nothing.

You literally try everything you try to increase the small circle of foods and chicken nuggets (for example) are great because the meat is chopped to bits so it's easier to chew they are standardised shape taste etc I'm fortunate mine will eat fish fingers and chicken nuggets (fish fingers are bizarrely more socially acceptable) but he won't eat a sausage or any "chunk" of meat sandwiches are good with one filling unless it's chicken tikka then it must have cheese (chicken tikka again processed and easy to bite)

He is 12 and it's exhausting flexing food around feelings and trying to expand his safe foods without compromise on the ones he will eat

I get it and understand completely a child eating something whether that be junk or not is preferable to refusing to give them junk food and then eating nothing.

Definitely the sameness/predictability, also I think some of it might be the relative blandness of a lot of safe foods. With conditions like autism you've literally got more synapses firing within the brain in response to stimuli - it's likely a chicken nugget has the same complexity and depth of flavour for some autistic people as something like chicken shawarma for neutotypical people.

When your child turns down every dinner you make it's soul-destroying. The longer you spent making the meal the more soul destroying it is and the child picks up on that. So chucking nuggets in the oven makes a meal thats less loaded with emotion and that can be enough to help an anxious child eat.

I've got 4 autistic children and I'm lucky that none of them have ARFID. Although dc2 won't eat anything crispy like the top of cottage pie or lasagne and dc3 likes his food nearly burnt. And dc5 would eat pasta with grated cheese for every meal if he had the choice.

Texture and visually how it looks - it's where food chaining has developed from. DS4 will only eat baked beans, mango (in slices not cubes) and chopped banana. I'd love him to eat a chicken nugget

You start out making fresh food for your child. They may even eat it, but as they age, they start gagging and rejecting meals. They start losing weight. You take them to doctors. In desperation, you break down and start trying foods you never imagined feeding your child.

Miraculously, they work. Why? Because they are homogenous. every bite is uniform. There are no surprises.

Your child will eat chicken nuggets from one and only one restaurant so you go there every day and buy them. They recognize you and start making your order as you arrive. If you miss a day they ask why. Your child stops losing weight. You and your child’s doctor know you are doing the right thing.

Some people tell you that you are a bad parent and you realize they can fuck off.

My DS has ARFID. He will eat Jazz apples (provided they are unwaxed and have no bruises or cuts or green / yellow bits, and he gets very distressed if they are mealy); cucumbers sliced a particular way with tons of salt on them; one particular brand of frozen pizza, and which has to be burnt to a crisp, and then he takes all the cheese off it.

He will sometimes eat Walker’s ready salted crisps.

He will drink bottled water, and M&S apple and elderflower juice.

That is literally all he will let pass his lips.

He won’t eat meat or cheese or eggs or yogurt or milk, because they all taste too animal, and he has huge issues with the texture of eggs any way they are cooked.

We have tried everything.

The texture / smell / taste of most foods cause him intense disgust to the point of fear. Imagine if every meal someone tried to make you swallow live worms. This is my best approximation of what it feels like for him.

It’s no fun at all.

My daughter (and I to be honest - we are both autistic) have some food restrictions. For me I really struggle with meat on the bone as biting into something unexpected is really jarring. It makes me anxious (though I’m great at masking it!). My daughter has a lot of feelings around smells so when we were having our most challenging times the food got plainer and plainer as we just tried to find anything she’d eat consistently - while also working and parenting our other child etc etc etc.

appreciate the lack of judgement! I do wonder sometimes if there were more things she would have eaten that I just wouldn’t think to have tried as ‘I’ don’t eat them or they aren’t part of our culture etc.

Because chicken nuggets are always the same. Apples are not.

This is such an interesting point. DS will sometimes eat fresh cooked chicken and homemade roast potatoes and usually eat chicken nuggets and oven chips. If he won’t eat the nuggets and chips then oh well, he can have a butter sandwich and that’s not a big deal. But it is so difficult not to beg them to “just try a little bit” when you’ve invested the time and money in a freshly prepared meal that you know is healthier.

My son doesn't have afrid but for about 5 years ate a restricted diet of safe foods. More in line with asd..

But his safe foods included mainly a few homemade dishes. It was very restricting for us as cafes, restaurant and friends didn't make it how I did. At least nuggets are common between lots of different settings and I worked hard to introduce them and baked beans.
.

I have kids with restricted eating, but not to arfid level. Same breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. At some point, the safe option is no longer tolerated and there is a while of changeover working out what the new meal is. It is often very distressing for one of them in this time, as he is very hungry, but can't cope with working out what the new thing is, so says no to everything offered while getting more hungry. They both eat a wide variety of fruit and the same vegetable with dinner, so not really worried on that front.

At one point ds2 would only eat fish if it was in fish finger form, but with the breadcrumbs removed. I tried white fish fillets, but they varied in size and shape and might have different colour bits. Uniform was safer.

Many of my son’s safe foods are healthy (carrots, strawberries, cucumber, raspberries, peas) but he was having virtually no protein. For him it’s partly texture, partly taste. Chicken nuggets & fish fingers are an acceptable texture. Popcorn chicken & fish cakes are even more acceptable. I started giving them to him in an attempt to get some protein into his diet. He was very underweight.

I can share our experience @Frangipani2 - when DD was weaning she wouldn't touch puree and we stuck to finger foods / baby led weaning. As she got slightly older it became apparent that there was something different going on, and at the same time she reduced the number of things she'd eat - but that's pretty normal for a toddler so I wasn't too concerned. Then it reduced and reduced and reduced until she was only really eating cucumber and drinking milk. We've always been really good about healthy eating (we have many other vices) but at one point on a long journey I realised that there was nothing available at the motorway services she'd eat other than possibly McDonalds fries (which predictably enough she loved). So that was one item of junk food immediately on the safe list.

She's much better now but still has a limited list of safe foods. Oddly enough she can't stand chicken nuggets (there's something in the coating she dislikes) but it's not just about taste and smell for her, it's also texture. So in your chicken example, different bits of fresh chicken can have different textures - and even the same part can have a different texture week to week depending on how long it's cooked, and a very slight difference which might not be noticeable to a NT child can be an impossible obstacle to an autistic child.

Thank you for everyone taking the time to
reply and share the experiences you have had with safe foods and doing so kindly.

As well as the consistency point, I think a lot of junk food works precisely because it’s junk food - it’s specifically designed to be palatable, appealing and acceptable to most people. Not that many people actually dislike oven chips (and probably most who do is the association with being unhealthy rather than actually disliking the taste and texture). So it’s hardly surprising that people who find many tastes snd textures challenging are fine with beige junk.

@KelseyParkGoose strangely I don’t really like oven chips not really a health thing just never have really liked them.

My daughter is an adult with ARFID.
It started from the day we started weaning (Obviously we didn't know it then, and it didn't have a name)
Couldn't tolerate most textures. From memory she only had Heinz pureed apple for breakfast for years. Ate only white food for 18m. Gagged at the sight of many many foods. No foods could touch.

Never junk food.. she didn't (and doesn't) eat stuff like chips/nuggets/ fast food.
Now 30, she eats ..pink lady apples ( have to be perfect) piccolo tomatoes (ditto) green beans. She will also eat salad and new potatoes and, thankfully, cheese. She will eat pate on crusty bread, and pasta with green pesto. No meat except (oddly) a very rare steak occasionally.
That's pretty much it.

She has (prescribed ) 4 fortisip supplements a day to keep from being very underweight, which has helped enormously as previously dietitions and doctors tried to insist she ate 3 meals a day, which has never ever happened. She has been tube fed and hospitalised in the past. Arfid is never a choice. She simply cannot tolerate many textures or smells of most foods and sameness is vital.

She is a doctor herself!

My other three ate normally...

I've got ARFID. Safe/not safe has nothing to do with taste or if I like the foods.

There are foods I like the taste of but are not safe foods so I can't eat them.

There are foods I don't like but are safe and I can eat them.

It's almost entirely around sensory issues and texture. If a certain texture is in my mouth I start gagging and I will vomit if I don't spit it out right away. This also completely kills my appetite for the rest of the day so triggering it too often can quickly lead to rapid weight loss.

Have you ever eaten or drank something and been very ill afterwards? And that made you unable to face eating something for a white afterwards? It's like that - even thinking about eating it makes you feel sick so you avoid it even though you logically know nothing is wrong with it.

As for why junk is often safe, well most junk is very very similar so if you tolerate one, you'll likely tolerate a lot of them. They are very simple textures and are exactly the same every time so there is no risk of nasty surprises.

(Sorry not really the point of the thread)

I dislike oven chips. They have a certain smell to them - I think it's the oil - if they are undercooked they smell and taste rancid to me, and some brands never seem to get out of the "rancid" state. I think it must be one of those supertaster things because I have so rarely come across anybody else who can smell/taste it. I notice it on McDonalds' chips as well when they are cooked too slowly or have been sat around for ages. (Like when you get them all soggy rather than crispy). KFC chips also used to be like it although they are a bit better now.

I don't have ARFID but I am a bit sensitive around food and certain smells.