@littlepattilou
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Many of those 'faddy eaters' have become that way because they found that different foods made them ill.
My sister was never a faddy eater, she just didn't eat because her 'asthma attacks' - ALLERGIES - made it hard for her to breathe long enough to have much food. Come 1971, when she was in emergency surgery for a collapsed lung, I'm sure nobody would have noticed she was or wasn't in school because she'd hardly been there in the first place and was so underweight and small due to lack of nutrition that they wouldn't have seen her unless she collapsed in front of them in assembly.
I just avoided/refused as many things as I could get away with - because even as a small child, I had begun to associate certain things with feeling crappier than usual - stomach ache, vomiting, daily headaches, itching, a permanently blocked nose, sudden occasions where I feel itching on the back of my hands and then I'd swell up and my lips would start blistering. However, because I refused things like pies, sausages, quiches, stews, soups, fish, tins of macaroni cheese, etc, despite happily eating vegetables if they weren't boiled to death, chicken (only ever bought once a week) and coming back from parties with new foods I liked - this got peanut butter & marmite into my diet, although the literally 'everything there' from the party for a Jewish girl wasn't realised to be 'because it was all dairy free', I was given dairy at almost every meal. So nothing changed until much later in life when I could decide what foods made me feel well. Which at one point involved declaring myself vegetarian, moving towards Vegan (as that would get me out of having dairy products) and yes, also led to an ED because nearly every fucking thing in the shops had something that would make me feel like shit in it.
In all honesty though, my dramatic reactions to medicines were more of a concern than my refusal to eat certain things. I have a lot of confirmed allergies to medication. No EpiPen required, because I don't take those things and have been trained since the 70s to know my medicine allergies and rattle them off the list ever increasing as I age to doctors and pharmacists fucking NSAIDs, one version of Vitamin D capsules and a Biologic now as well .
I'm still on Biologics for PsA (they regularly test for my forming antibodies towards them since the last allergy developing), but they don't solve all the symptoms. So I have to be a bit of a twat regarding cows' milk dairy - it's easier to say 'allergic to dairy' than 'well, I can manage 10ml of lactose free cow's milk or 12.5g of a mature cows' milk cheese if it's less than four days before or after a fortnightly jab, but I'm fine with goat or sheep cheese or yoghurt, not milk, though, within nine days either side or I'll have stomach pains, nausea and my entire immune system will flare up and start trying to continue to destroy my tendons or maybe my joints, maybe my heart, liver, kidneys or eyes, or maybe my hearing, I never know which one it is going to be'.
What annoys me is that whilst the cow/dairy thing is unequivocal, I know that wheat is also an issue. I don't want it to be. I resent it like hell. But if I eat it, I get the same stomach issues, a flare up in joints/tendons, flares in skin and I am in significantly greater pain. Eventually, I'm going to have to admit it to myself and others. But at the moment I keep it as an 'I prefer Rice/Potatoes' or 'How about courgette ribbons/cauliflower/etc instead of pasta?'.
I am so fucking glad I don't have issues with fruit, vegetables, beans, pulses, nuts or seeds, though. Or meat and fish/shellfish. Because I'd be bloody starving without those in my diet.