To think if you like eating something, you'll eat it in most forms?

[Nobodyknowsme101]

My 13yo has been fussy with food literally since birth! Very restricted diet.
What recently is driving me mad is the fact that I've noticed he'll eat a certain food in one dish but refuse to eat it in another saying he doesnt like it 🙄
Examples :
•Will eat cheese on a pizza but insists he hates cheese and wont eat it in burgers, pasta, on potato etc.
•Eats chicken nuggets/breaded chicken burgers and roast chicken as part of a roast dinner but refuses chicken in any other form saying he doesnt like it such as cold in a sandwich or in homemade chicken nuggets which to me were not much different in taste to the frozen ones.
•Will eat fish from the chip shop but insists he doesnt like fish when I've given him homemade fish nuggets or even frozen fish fingers.
•Will eat bolognese or chilli from a jar but when I've done a homemade version it's too disgusting for him to even try. (Despite me and others trying it and it hardly tastes any different to the jarred ones)

I can't think of anything I like to eat that i dont like at all in certain dishes. I have preferences for the way I eat things but I cant say oh I love scrambled egg but hate poached because at the end of the day egg tastes like egg in most forms surely!?

Is he just being fussy or am I being unreasonable? Would love to hear feedback if you can relate to the way my son thinks because I just cant understand it 🙃

@emilyfrost I get what your saying but my point is that he wouldn't even try it so he himself doesnt even know if it was any different.
He literally didn't even touch it even though I said to try it as it's similar to what I cook at home.

I love chicken cooked in a lot of different ways but don't like chicken nuggets or other similar forms of processed chicken in breadcrumbs or batter from supermarkets or takeaway. It tastes completely different to me.
Different kinds of cheese also taste very different. Melted mozzarella on a pizzas is quite different from uncooked cheddar. I don't like blue or smoked cheese.
Fresh or tinned salmon are lovely, but not smoked, as I don't like smoked food.
So there's lots of foods that you can enjoy in one form but not another.

It’s a sensory/ texture thing. It’s not ‘fussy’, it’s what he likes/ doesn’t like.

How is the texture of cheese different on pizza to pasta? It's all melted strings surely?

You haven't met DH with his list of 101 things he couldn't possibly eat...

Apples - only Granny Smith and only if it's been cut in quarters with the middle bit taken out

Strawberries - likes the flavour so Strawberry milkshake ok, Actual strawberry no - it's the texture.

Egg - only in fried form and only as long as none of the white has jumped into the yolk while cooking and he can see it because he only eats the yellow bit - that would be a void egg.

And on and on it goes.........

I agree to an extent. I don't like the combination of certain textures e g I like prawns but hate them in a sandwich. I like peas and I like mashed potato but dislike them together.

In other cases I will only eat food in certain forms e.g eggs are fine in cakes or bread but not on their own.

I give mine a chewable multiVit every day @Nobodyknowsme101 to make up for the lack of things.

Im exactly the same as your son. And no theybare not the same, the tastes and textures and combinations are totally different.

Tomato, love a tomato, in a salad, a sandwich, a sauce, hot, cold, raw, cooked but never ever as soup. There is no connection whatsoever between a tomato and tomato soup.

YABU. Me and DH like tomatoes cooked in a sauce but can't stand them raw. Our DC are the opposite, in fact they don't really like any cooked veg but they will eat a lot of it raw. I can't stand mashed or boiled potatoes but love chips, jacket or roasted. Our DC will only eat chicken nuggets from the freezer, not the ones I make myself which me and DH prefer.

@snorkelface I will agree with that one, tomato cooked/raw is a very different thing and soup/ketchup are in a completely different league.
I guess i need to think more like that with regards to the way my son sees things!

My (actually not very fussy in general) DS is Iike this about tomatoes .

Loves pizza, any tomato-based pasta sauce, tomato soup etc etc, but give him raw tomato in any form and you'd think I was trying to poison him.

Pestilential child.

Ha ha x-posted with all the tomato people.

@Dollywilde - I get what she means. I love pasta but the two I can't stand are farfalle and tagliatelle. Farfalle is just horrible because the middle is too hard, the edges too soft and a tiny bit in the middle is the right al dente texture. And tagliatelle is like trying to eat tape worms. Horrible texture. Never realised I was fussy until I read your post.

To think if you like eating something, you'll eat it in most forms?

I dont think this is true. Food is about texture and associations as much as taste.

I love peanuts bit hate peanut butter (sticks to the roof of your mouth)
I love marmalade but hate oranges (too messy)
I like bread but hate bread and butter pudding (soggy bread ewww)
I love potatoes in most forms apart from boiled old potatoes (remind of disgusting school dinners), and I think potatoes in soup is just wrong.

But you have my sympathies over children who won't even try a new food. I have 2 like that, both have sensory differences as part of their autism and this makes them very fearful around unfamiliar food. One has got slightly better with age.

I'll eat eggs in every way but not fried it's disgusting so I totally get it haha

@Nobodyknowsme101

Just to add I'm not trying to make him eat anything he doesnt want but i do worry about his health. He doesnt like milk or yogurt so if I could get him to eat a little melted cheese on something then that would get some calcium into him. He eat no veg except for broccoli but will only eat that with a roast once a week. I try the homemade versions of chilli/bolognese to get fresher ingredients like tomato/pepper whizzed up in the sauce into him but it's not forced and once he's refused it I dont keep at him. His diet is very much processed rubbish and although I'm happy to accept he has issues with texture I just wonder if sometimes he says he doesnt like things because he knows I'll give in and he'll get his preferred freezer meals instead.

I agree it's very frustrating.

I had suprise success with DD2 in lockdown a Nadia's recipes set as part of BBC bitesized lesson got her eating a lot of veg she normally wouldn't.-www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cheats_samosas_93691

Mine will sometime try things if they've helped cook it - but not always and it's a constant effort to get them to eat healthy - but mine will occaionally go hungry when I don't reach for other foods - so maybe try not giving in everytime see what reaction you get.

Otherwise if you can not get milk or yogurt in him try other sources of calcium - seafood, leafy greens, legumes, dried fruit, tofu and various foods that are fortified with calcium or vitamin pill in meantime.

Egg lover, but can't do scrambled egg or egg sandwiches. I definitely have a thing where I will love a food cooked 'well' but not 'badly'. In most cases I'd be able to eat it, but wouldn't enjoy it.

My daughter don’t like mushrooms or leeks but will eat mushroom soup, leek and potato soup

@Derelictwreck

How is the texture of cheese different on pizza to pasta? It's all melted strings surely?

On a pizza the cheese properly gets melted unlike on pasta unless it's a cheese bake type dish.

The tomato base adds another taste to the cheese, and of course the tomato base differs just like your jars/homemade/restaurant. Never mind the toppings

The cheese thing is also complicated by the variety of cheeses and the tastes/textures they each have. Pizza shop grated cheese can also differ to what we buy and doesn't have the same rubbery texture many have.

I love cheese, but I can't eat if it's melted. That's why I never eat pizza or cheese on toast.

I like fresh cherries, but cannot stand them as glace cherries in cakes, or anything cherry-flavoured like jam or yoghurt, or even cherry cola. I can eat a banana, but cut up there's no way I could eat it, the cut sides are slippery and the texture makes me heave.

My dd likes jam in every way possible except one. She will not eat a jam sandwich.

There's nothing unusual in the way he's behaving OP. Don't make a huge issue of it, because that will just make it worse. Just provide food and if he doesn't want it, then let him fill up on bread & butter and apples instead.

I like bacon in a sandwich, or as part of a fry up. But put it on pizza, or in a sauce and I can't stand it

I don't think anyone can say that anyone else's tastes are/not ok. It's personal.

I will eat white sauce or cheese sauce in a fish pie but it turns my stomach in pasta. If it is shop bought I literally feel sick, homemade is somewhat better but not by much.

I will eat tomatoes in a salad, am now OK with passata but do not like bologna sauce, I find most people are heavy handed with it.

I eat cheddar cheese, vegetarian hard cheese and mozarella but can't manage the pongy stuff whereas dh thinks the smellier the better. I do like food heavy on the garlic and ginger ( so am not averse to all pongy food) though.

I know I am fussy, my kids are thankfully like dh and eat everything.