Did some ND children starve before chicken nuggets were invented?

[BusWankers]

I'm not being horrible, genuinely curious.

You read on here how a child who has autism or some other issue, will only eat safe foods. Usually a lot of things like chicken nuggets, a particular brand of cheese and onion crisps, Nutella, supermarket pizzas (UPF mostly)

Do we think children in the 1920s just went hungry? Or perhaps they were forced to eat foods they didn't like. After all you do hear stories,of adults even now being made to sit at the table and choke down food etc.

My niece has ARFID. Her safe foods are absolute junk, high sugar, high salt, low fibre and low nutritional value.

This is because my sister refuses to cook.

Niece used to eat vegetables when her father was alive. His death when she was 2 was traumatic and they think the reason for the onset of ARFID. Late BIL was the cook, so when he died home cooked foods were replaced with packet stuff and ready meals. At this point niece was introduced to UPFs which she hadn’t really eaten before.

Upshot is niece has to take a daily cocktail of vitamins and laxatives otherwise she’d end up in hospital.

Whilst the ARFID probably couldn’t have been avoided, if my sister had continued to only offer her home cooked foods my niece’s safe ones wouldn’t be UPFs with all the issues those bring. Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulliken is a bit of an eye opener about how UPFs aren’t food so much as non-toxic chemical compounds.

Sadly they both live hundreds of miles away so the family have had no input to assist.

I don’t usually bother to counter the “if they are hungry enough, they’ll eat eventually” posts as I get enough of that IRL. It’s exhausting how much this is misunderstood.

But yes - totally agree! My DC with ASD is very adept at not eating at all to the point of extreme ill health if there’s none of their “safe” foods available. As a teenager now, they do try but it just leads to actual gagging and distress.

My DB grew up in 70s and 80s when diets were plainer and literally ALL he ate was mashed potatoes with brown sauce. Some meat. He’s still the same now!

Recent research showing growing evidence that some people being hospitalised with eating disorders actually have undiagnosed autism rather than an ED per se, makes sense to me…..

No idea. Mine is a healthy weight (thanks milk!) so there’s nothing we can do but find our own methods to get him to try new things.

In obesity land there isn’t much support unless you have a co-occurring condition or you pay for it yourself. I imagine those with overweight ARFID children will just be judged as unfit parents just like those with underweight children or those deemed just to be picky eaters and pandered to.

I’m not sure there’s loads of research into it. Much of what you can find is collections of parents accounts.

Now you've got me thinking about it! I wonder if this was a reason a lot gentleman's clubs traditionally served nursery food. It's always made out that it reminded them of school, but it could also be that they were safe foods.

Reading so many of these posts about ND children forced to eat, as I was as an undiagnosed child, breaks my heart for all the little children we once were 😭

My daughter has ARFID and eats what you said in the OP.

Funnily enough I discovered my mother, as a child, lived off tins of tomato soup for about 4 years. Didnt eat anything else apart from that and toast.

If I was looking for research I'd start with the Beat website I think.

That’s not true. You need to look at the stats for children with ARFID who are peg fed in hospital because they won’t eat when hungry.

That is truly awful and unsafe

sorry you had to put up with that

https://www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/search/sapub1362-recipe-cards

It’s interesting to look at what we used to eat and how bland our food used to be. Like was said before it would have been standard to have meat and two veg every day and I don’t expect anyone would even notice.

I'm noticing there is a lot of ignorance from certain corners of what ARFID actually is, which seems to be fuelling some of the misunderstanding.

They're missing the part where yes, some of is is about taste/texture, but a large part boils down to what is essentially Neo-phobia.. that being a fear of anything new/different that is applied to food.

The sensory side of it comes from sensory processing disorder and is common across kids with ASD (and adults) where a different texture/feeling creates a revulsion and aversion.

The two things together when applied to food make it near impossible to tolerate anything new/different in terms of texture, taste and food.

It isn't a matter of 'they'll eventually eat it'

While Exposure therapy does have some movement in treating phobias, it's known not to work well where food is concerned.

I'd ask those of you with phobias to consider, as a child, how you would have felt if you'd been forced to touch the thing which you were most scared of.. and to the point they would put it in front of you and leave you there for HOURS until you did.
But now not only do you have to TOUCH the snake/spider/wasp/moth/thing with holes in it, but you have to pick it up and put it in your mouth.

Now tell me you'd do it if left with it long enough.

@MsPengiuns Children with a limited range of foods are often overweight because the foods are highly palatable and calorific. I imagine this is worse now we have so much UPF in our diets but the cheapest food by calorie has been custard creams for decades.

@MissPeachyKeen

As an aside, much of what is commonly believed about life in medieval times is wrong.

Could you kindly recommend some books on this? I have read that medieval peasants had a lot more holidays (literally Holy Days) and free time than say workers from the industrial revolution onwards, including the present day.

How do the restrictive diets affect your dcs teeth?

in our case, my DS has perfect teeth. He is 19 and never needed anything other than check ups.

Some of that is because he only drinks water.
The other being that part of his autism means he has a strict routine of brushing twice a day.

edited to add, we did have a brief hiccup with toothpaste to begin with, but so long as we stick to a particular brand/flavour (colgate) he is fine.

DD teeth v good despite too much sweet stuff.

She actually collects Hismile toothpastes. I think she has about 8 flavours

Those are such a boon!

I do worry that she could balloon if she stops exercising when older. At the moment she's like a whippet.

As usual, it's probably a mix of things. Some ate fine because bread was a safe food and the staple diet of most. Some were beaten into eating. Some were weakened by malnutrition and succumbed to other diseases. Some failed to thrive and starved. No one would have been keeping accurate records and probably wouldn't have considered the food input when the child was dying of dysentery.

I have a restricted eater, although not to arfid level. They are great at fruit and veg, but very restricted with protein. I give them the savoury food they want with no trying to get them to submit. Their life is already hard enough and I don't need to add to it by forcing them to have a more varied diet.

My great aunt May was clearly very neuro divergent. She would only eat white toast for breakfast and only toasted on one side. The soft side was buttered and she at one slice for breakfast every morning of her adult life. She would occasionally( when they were in season) eat an apple and a match box size chunk of white cheddar for her lunch but often it was a boiled egg and some cheese. Evening meal was a little meat and two veg ( never potato) or a stew. She seemed to survive on tea with lots of milk , 3 rich tea biscuits a day and 20 cigarettes a day She was 7 1/2 stone for her entire life and she could never understand why we didn’t want to eat at her house. The cupboards were almost empty apart from biscuits cheese, apples, chicken, carrots and tea. Her siblings were all big buxom women who went the exact opposite.

There were an awful lot of kids who "failed to thrive", child mortality was higher anyway, but it wouldn't surprise me if those who died as young children were disproportionately undiagnosed neurodiverse.

Safe food also isn't always processed. Autistic DS only ate iceberg lettuce and cucumber for weeks during a particularly bad stage. At the time I would have been delighted if he had eaten chicken nuggets, anything to get enough calories in.

i had to work HARD to get my DS to eat chicken nuggets, he is a sausage and chips autist, lol.

Ds struggles to brush his teeth for both the sensory aspect of putting something in his mouth and the taste of the toothpaste.

As his main calorie intake is from milk I don’t think his teeth are terribly affected.

We spent a small fortune finding a flavour he could tolerate, and tried loads of toothbrushes to find one he could use. He still gags every time.

His teeth thankfully are ok. The little he does manage to brush seems to
be working.

I thought there wasn't so much out there. It would be interesting to read if there was more.

Milk is one good food to have! There is that!

Autistic people try to control their environment to minimise melt downs and dysregulation. This can be consciously or unconsciously.

Neurotypical people can see this as being ‘controlling’ but it’s basically reducing the demands placed upon the autistic person’s own, autistic brain.

Once people realise that placing demands upon autistic people can cause massive dysregulation, and they then lower these demands (eating is a demand), the easier it makes everyday life for the autistic person.

Bread and butter probably

My autistic DD6 would rather starve than eat something that is not her safe foods. Her safe foods currently are scrambled eggs, sausages, mashed potatoes, cucumber/tomatoes and crackers, so it's not too bad nutritionally. Occassionally she will eat other things, but it's the exception rather than the norm. She probably would eat chicken nuggets though if offered, but strangely doesn't like plain chicken.