To not feed DS pasta for every meal

[PastaMonsta]

Yet another meal wasted because DS decided he didn’t like it. The list of foods he wants to eat is getting smaller and smaller. Today he decreed unless the meal is pasta based (spaghetti bolognaise, spaghetti carbonara, macaroni cheese) he won’t eat it.

Asides from the fact no one else in the family wants to eat pasta for every meal it’s just not healthy. AIBU? And can you think of any meal suggestions he might like that are like pasta but not?

For context he’s in Y5, has ASD, and is on the 99% percentile for BMI

Exactly.

Literally one million people died. It was a tradegy and not some kind of "gotcha" about fussy eaters.

Your mum would say a child with a diagnosis is spoilt? She sounds charming.

The child in question has ASD.

Yeah, I don’t know how he got so large on that either but honestly he’s huge. I think it’s the amount he eats and the volume of milk. He does eat ice cream everyday too and some chocolate

That, and lockdown, because before lockdown he was very active and now he’s not at all

99th centile is heavier then 99 children his age, so I think he's ok with what you want to do. My asd child's weights on the 1st centile 😱 so he eats whatever he wants, howether repetitive.

99% of*

I don’t think he would starve himself. But he would dehydrate before drinking anything other than milk so the I agree potential is there.

I have another DS with ASD who is on the 2nd percentile. He would starve himself. He actually will a eat a wide range of foods but only a teeny amount because he doesn’t like the feeling of food in his body.

My son with asd eats the same meal everyday 🤷‍♀️
Pick your battles is my motto

I think I’m just exhausted at the daily food battles and cooking up a separate pasta dish each day feels a lot of effort.

But if the general consensus is that pasta everyday won’t harm him and will help to reduce the battles I’m willing to give it a go

My daughter is very selective and will only generally eat pasta or rice as a carb. I still serve whatever our main meal is but with pasta or rice for her too. Today was chicken and leek pie with sweet potato wedges. I took her portion, put the pastry on the side and mixed the filling with the pasta. I still served the filo pastry and sweet potato knowing full well she wouldn’t eat it.

She is three and on the 9th percentile having fallen from near the 50th. She’d have cried if I had given her the pie and sweet potatoes but reframing it with a safe food of pasta whilst still exposing her to the other food works for us. She also occasionally has a try of other foods that we are exposing her too which gradually is expanding her accepted food groups. I live in hope that one day she’ll eat any form of potato to make my life easier, I’d even accept chips at this point!

Plain Pasta will keep in the fridge for 5 days... job done, just serve with different things
Eg. Grated cheese
Tuna & sweetcorn
Tomato sauce & bacon
Mince
Cheese sauce
Marmite
Garlic butter

The only potato he eats is chips if they come from the chippy and are also covered in cheese. He will sometimes eat McDonald’s Fries.

The only bread he eats is burnt toast like it has to be black! Or if we’ve had a roast he’ll eat gravy soaked bread and Yorkshire pudding rather than roasties. He won’t eat sandwiches or anything and he hates pizza

He doesn’t eat rice in any form

Can you swap him to skimmed milk at least? Maybe even add a little water?

I did not know you could keep pasta in the fridge for five days! I was thinking I’d have to cook a fresh batch each day

I'd lean into it with an ASD kid. He's picked pasta as his vehicle, if he's not texture restrictive you can get a lot of toppings in there.

You can sneak all sort of shit into the sauce- blend pulses, mushrooms, random leftover veg, all sorts of stuff.

You can make it cheaper to cater for just him by batch cooking sauces and freezing them in portions to top his pasta. Shoving a few handfuls of pasta in a saucepan to boil isn't a going to take a huge amount of headspace.

If he's excited by pasta you could see if he wants to try wholegrain pasta, and things like spinach and beetroot pasta.

Try topping with low fat mozzarella rather than cheddar if he will have it- it's much more protein rich.

I've got autism and I often eat the same foods over and over, and I particularly do it when there's periods of stress, upheaval and uncertainty in my life. I like the routine, I find the same mouthfeel over and over really comforting. I like the idea of no surprises ("food stress") when I'm already stressed at other things.

I wonder if you could get him to branch out into egg noodles, you could move onto protein rich sauces like satay then.

I’ve recently managed to switch him to semi skimmed sometimes depending on his mood but not skimmed.

OP you sound like you have a lot on your plate. Having two extremes in terms of weight must be hard to accommodate.

Oh and if you mix through a bit of butter AND olive oil through plain pasta it stops it sticking together in clumps.

It is hard because while I’m trying to encourage one to eat something I’m telling the other no you’ve had enough

I only ate cheese on toast for ages - eat almost everything now. Sounds like he’s eating a bigger variety than that and at least getting some veggies in.

I'd start mixing a little skimmed milk into the semi skimmed bottle if you can. Slowly slowly so he doesn't notice the change

I think you should ask your GP for a referral to a food clinic. I agree not to make eating a battle ground and that his diet doesn’t sound half bad but if you agree to restrict options they may get narrower and narrower. There are ways to approach theses things with Autism and usually it needs a stranger away from the family home to help him try and accept new things.

My boys with ASD were getting so restricted in their food options and meal times were causing them so much anxiety. It turned out it was partly the food, but also the sitting at the table, noises, using cutlery. We started letting them eat in the playroom off a tray in front if the TV and once the focus moved away from eating and everything associated with it they started to eat more variety. We turned a blind eye to eating cottage pie with hands etc as they were eating..If they are tired or already anxious we always just serve the safe favourites. It has definitely improved things. They can sit and eat properly if they have to now ( safe foods only !) But the exposure to different flavours and textures is improving but still under their control.

I edged mine along: understand it won't work for everyone but in case it works for you:
if he'll eat cannelloni stuffed with beef and cheese baked in a tomato sauce, try an 'enchilada' with the same filling in a rolled wrap served with the tomato sauce but a bit of the wrap uncovered to stay dry. If he's ok with the wrap then maybe after a few times he can roll it himself.

Gradual changes from tomato to bolognese to chilli to fajitas , from pasta to tortillas to flatbreads to pizza base.

His weight may improve if he can eat his safe foods and therefore he might not snack as much

For me eating a meal with foods in that are wrong for me (its texture related) feels as exhausting as trying to have a serious intense conversation in a nightclub when the music is playing full blast. After awhile its just so exhausting you have to give up. I would eat part of my meal and then stop because the sheer effort of forcing myself to eat it was exhausting. But then because I hadnt eaten enough I would snack later on foods that were texturally comfortable but unhealthy.

Once I allowed myself to cut out the food I massively struggled with, meat in my case, my weight decreased, my anemia got better (sounds counterintuitive when I gave up meat but its because I was eating lots of healthy food instead of lots of snacks) and now I barely if ever snack and I've lost over 2 stone.

Sometimes forcing 'healthier' food is not actually the healthiest option