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 🙃

The cheese one is really common, even in adults.

I love raw carrots and carrot soup but can't stand roasted or boiled carrots. I love raw cauliflower but hate it cooked, unless it's light cooked and in curry sauce.

Is it a texture problem?

Do you like tea served tepid, OP? Boiled ice cream? Raw sausages? A nice banana slathered with mayonnaise? No?

Why ever not?

It sounds like you’ve got tastebuds made of bricks.

You’re also completely ignoring the importance of texture and consistency.

You’ve said yourself in almost every example you’ve given in your OP that you can hardly taste the difference. There is a difference. And to someone with more sensitive tastebuds than you that difference will be important, along with the differences in texture, and the differences in consistency between homemade vs shop bought (pre-packaged is the same every time therefore reliable therefore trustworthy, homemade isn’t).

I detest the smoochyness of bananas but like the flavour.

@Eckhart

Do you like tea served tepid, OP? Boiled ice cream? Raw sausages? A nice banana slathered with mayonnaise? No?

Why ever not?

Tepid tea - had a banging Earl Grey cocktail in a bar last year

Boiled ice cream - basically custard?

Raw sausages - no due to health risk but love steak tartare which is minced raw meat

Banana and mayo - but that’s a combination! Very different. Of course some things shouldn’t be combined...

Not trying to be antagonistic but some of those are really just variants on established stuff!

The combination thing though, I hear you. DH has been known to throw some truly weird things on a plate together...

YABU - DD3 does this (doesn't like cold meat, eats any meat hot; doesn't like cheese, will eat it on a pizza)

It makes sense to her, so we just roll with it

My DS is like this and it drives me potty. He ate absolutely everything until he was 4 then it’s like something switched in his brain and he became the fussiest eater imaginable. He loves pizza and pasta with tomato pasta sauce for example but he refuses to eat ketchup (I accidentally added a tiny bit on his plate the other week and he refused to eat anything he thought had gone near the smidgen of ketchup ffs) or tomatoes of any kind. He also only likes certain brands of pizza, some of them he just won’t touch. He won’t eat Quorn chicken burgers but he likes the nuggets ?! They’re made of the same thing, just a different shape! Truly don’t understand it, totally baffles me.

He’s ten now so it’s been a six year battle and I don’t know how to get around it. His diet is extremely limited so I make him have a vitamin every day to make myself feel a bit better. He loves most fruit thankfully so at least he gets some nutrients there...

@Eckhart

Do you like tea served tepid, OP? Boiled ice cream? Raw sausages? A nice banana slathered with mayonnaise? No?

Why ever not?

I used to have a weird thing for raw sausage meat, had to be beef. Have never liked sausages cooked.

Not to you in particular Eckhart but what is it with people when you say you don't something, people come back with - it's because you've never tried it done "my" way? lol

Scrambled eggs taste different to poached eggs. Roast chicken breast tastes different to grilled chicken breast. The same food can taste different depending on how it is prepped, cooked and even where it is sourced from. We started using a butcher at the beginning of lockdown - the chicken from them tastes a lot better than the chicken from Tesco, even if I cook it the same way. I wouldn’t class myself as fussy. In fact I like to cook the same ingredients different ways to get different tastes and textures.

@BabyDubsEverywhere

"I love eggs boiled, poached, or fried sunny side up, or in quiche, but cannot stomach them scrambled, in omelets, or fried both sides. blush"

This must be a thing. I have exactly the same!
I do have a thing about textures in general. I think it's the texture in each of those (the bouncy bobbles in the scramble, the oiliness and slickness of the other two). I'm not very keen in general on egg white, couldn't eat a poached one on its own, but if it's on toast, that hides the texture enough to go ahead.

More than anything, I hate a mix of textures, especially hard, crunchy bits in normal food (eg. nuts or seeds in salad). Nothing surprising lurking!

So in response to the OP, it could be that over taste. Or if the other food either masks taste or texture a bit (melted cheese on pizza usually contains veg and lots of tomato sauce/gets sogged into the bread)

I will eat any form of tomatoes in sauces, cooking etc. But I will not eat raw tomato. Slimy and sloppy.

One of my kids will eat bowls of grated cheese but will never eat in on a sandwich or cheese on toast. She'll even pick the cheese off pizza.

I’m so glad there are so many other cheese hating pizza eaters out there - I thought it was just me! I can eat the mildest of cheddars, but other than that I hate cheese, but will happily eat pizza (so long as it’s not a four cheese pizza). The idea of melted cheese on anything else though is revolting to me. I guess mozzarella is also pretty mild and so doesn’t taste too much like proper cheese. That’s a long winded way of saying YABU.

@BabyDubsEverywhere

It can be taste, texture, even the look of the thing! I have a bit of a mental block with eggs which I can't really explain. I love eggs boiled, poached, or fried sunny side up, or in quiche, but cannot stomach them scrambled, in omelets, or fried both sides.

I'm partly the other way round. I'll eat scrambled, omelette, hard boiled eggs and the whites of well done fried eggs. I won't eat fried egg yolk, soft boiled egg or poached eggs. In the case of the last two, I can't even sit at the same table as someone eating them.

I can see where he's coming from. I can eat prawns cold but can't eat them in a hot dish. I don't mind fish but couldn't eat a fish stew.

All the foods you have described that they will eat are processed, so higher in sugar and salt (unbelievably there's sugar in readymade pizza crust).

Maybe that's the link?

I'm not generally a fussy eater but my food dislikes are about the way things are cooked. Will eat any forms of potato but can't bear mash. I'll eat mushrooms on a pizza or in a casserole or pasta dish but I won't eat them with, for example, a cooked breakfast and I don't like mushroom soup or sauces.

YABU. Everyone is different. I have super smell which can be a total pita, cos if a food doesn’t smell ‘right’ I can’t eat it. Same with fabrics. Can’t wear or have man made fibres.

I know it’s a pita. But I would concentrate on what he will eat rather than won’t. The broccoli thing - it’s obviously a combination of the various textures. Would he eat roast chicken pieces ie a leg or something as long as it had the skin on when it was cooked with frozen roast pots (I love the aunt Bessie ones) and broccoli as a quick way of a roast dinner. Would he have gravy made with the broccoli water?

Would he eat homemade pizza ? Does he help you to cook? Maybe getting him involved in the prep process may help?

As others have said its a texture thing. The same foods can have completely different textures when cooked in different ways and some can have different textures when they are supposedly cooked in the same way if they are cooked for different lengths.

I hate tomatoes, proper real tomatoes that is.
However give me a bowl of tomato soup or tomato sauce or spag bol etc, quite happy.

My 10 year old son Hates cheese will eat it on pizza But not in a sandwich, cheese on toast on pasta ect. Loves omelettes but won’t eat fried eggs, scrambled eggs ect. Loves mince and dumplings but won’t eat spag Bol or Shepard’s pie.

I could have typed your post regarding my youngest. It’s incredibly frustrating and drives me potty. Meal times are a nightmare. I wish I could give you some advice but I’ve yet to find any magical dust to sprinkle over his food to make him eat it.

I went to a workshop for parents of fussy eaters once. The thing that stayed with me was how they helped us see how difficult it can be for our children to try new things.

First, remember that for a lot of picky eaters, they are really hypersensitive to flavour and texture, so they've already had bad experiences with unfamiliar food.

During the break, while people were having tea and biscuits, the OTs running the course handed round snacks. The snacks were toasted crickets and dried mealie worms. Both totally edible and even thought to be delicious by some.

Most of the parents couldn't even bring themselves to hold the bowl of insects, let alone pick one up and eat it.

That's how a picky eater probably feels when you try to force them to eat something not on their list of 'allowed' foods.

Rationally they may know it's not dangerous, but they can't get over the 'ick' feeling. And too much pressure will just make it worse - imagine if you had to gag down the insects or be shouted at. Would that make you want to eat them again?

Can you work with your son to try and design as healthy a meal plan as possible within his comfort zone? If you can manage a whole week's worth, that's great, but if not, that's ok. Feeding him the same meal every day might not be how you imagined being a parent, but taking the pressure off mealtimes really will help. Both him and you!

I quite like baked beans but cold they make me gag. If I am eating them I sometimes have to give them a blast in the microwave halfway through

Now with baked beans @Hoppinggreen if they're over cooked so the sauce goes "thick" they're 🤮!

Cooked so they are still bean shaped and defined they are 😋!