To think just don’t offer them beige food?

[Ashlll]

Or am I spectacularly uneducated here? My sister has a 3 year old who apparently will only eat beige food and mostly crisps. She says it’s a sensory thing and we have to respect it when around him, for example when I took him and dd out last week I had to give him quavers rather than the snacks I had got for dd… which then made dd want quavers too! Same with water, he won’t drink it and it has to be juice.

I am not massively strict but did say to dsis just don’t buy these things then he won’t know he can ask for them… she says he just won’t eat or drink. I think this is ridiculous (I’ve not said this to her). AIBU?!?

I think the analogy of starving kids in Africa is a good one. Do you think they’d turn down food because it was perfectly round and fried?

A sincere thanks to the three posters who replied to my query (what would happen if it had never been introduced). If I could ask another question?
Is it possible to make a healthier version instead of buying upf first? ie. child has never tried chicken nuggets, so you coat chicken chunks in egg and crumb then bake?
Or, is it a situation of you've already gone that route without success and you're at desperation level to get your dc to eat something?
It must be frightening when your child won't eat and gets to the point of feeding tubes. I imagine I'd feel so helpless.
Is there much help from the medical system?

I am here to tell you that you're wrong. I've lived this. I would have starved and tbh I would still starve before I would eat green veg!

Plus as long as there’s lots of fresh fruit, veg etc and limited processed beige foods it’s not a huge issue

Yes, they are if they're all a child will eat.

Imagine a 3yo who will only eat boiled potatoes. Or who will only eat a certain brand of breadsticks. Or who will only eat plain white rice. For weeks and months on end. And who will vomit or gag or scream if you even try and offer them anything else.

Are you honestly telling me that's okay and not problematic at all?

You clearly haven't got a clue!

Neither had I. But I had given her pasta (beige), toast (beige), bread (beige), potatoes… chicken… bread sticks… crackers… all beige. She has been hospitalised multiple times and cannot maintain her weight or nutritional levels. You’re assuming this is an issue linked to children being weaned on quavers. It is not. The issues don’t tend to start until 2/3 when it’s actually not that uncommon to let your child try a crisp (as a side note my daughter won’t eat those either). You’re making an awful lot of assumptions and judgement about how this develops and are showing little understand of the pathology.

And I understand how that happens. I get that some kids will cling to the blander plainer foods and there’s a variety of reasons for that. That’s not what I’m asking about. I’m asking about ‘only Quavers/juice/mostly crisps‘ kids. The OP literally described this child’s diet as ‘mostly crisps’.

As previously stated, the list of safe foods is whittled down from what they’re offered. If they hadn’t ever been offered beige, they wouldn’t cling to beige.

I've read all the replies and people are explaining how this happens.

Necessity is the mother of all appetites.

When you've exhausted all the food options you can think of, you start looking at other available options.

DC has ARFID and from weaning onwards refused everything. Mealtimes were bite > disgusted face > spit out > distressed crying and repeat for more or less all foods. By the time they were a year old they were living on breast milk, plain Weetabix, grated mozzarella, cucumber (but only the middle segment with the seeds), and the soft insides of homemade potato wedges (but not the crispy 'cooked' outside bit). Gave them a Birds Eye chicken dipper one day in desperation and they ate it. Halle-fucking-lujah, food they'd eat expanded by one however no other chicken products would do, it had to be Birds Eye (they're less fibrous than other brands and the batter is thinner than imitations).

By age two they were eating those same foods but were also eating Yorkshire puddings, plain/unseasoned chicken breast (but only the softer middle section as the outside was 'too cooked'), grapes (red only), malt loaf (unbuttered), peanut butter on toast, and plain pasta (penne only).

Ok, so I replied to the thread earlier to talk about my own experiences where for years the only meal I would eat was plain pasta with grated cheese served separately. You don’t consider a child living off that diet as problematic?
You can’t see how a parent whose child will only eat a plain cheese sandwich or bread and butter might try adding things on the side to order get extra calories in and broaden their child’s tastes? Those things might include berries or cucumber but also things like a handful of crisps or a biscuit.

It is very easy to state what you would or wouldn’t do until you are in a situation that you don’t expect to find yourself in.

You can try and make a healthier version at home, but the issue is that very, very few homemade meals are exactly the same each time.

So your child may eat it once, but if you offer it a second time and used a different brand of breadcrumbs, for example - they may refuse and then never even try it again because of that negative association.

And no, there is virtually no help out there. You feed your children anything because it's better than seeing them starve.

It’s far less problematic than quavers. Cook the pasta in bone broth - cover it in butter, grated cheese - starts to look nutritionally balanced quite easily.

Nothing will happen if your child will have some crisps or juice on days out with someone who has fussy eater.
We eat very healthy at home. However, I have lots of friends with autistic kids and honestly, food is the last thing to care about. One day full of "beige" with juice and then coming back to "our normal ".
Parents with SEN kids have ENOUGH things to care about rather than worry than someone's child will have to many crisps....

It doesn’t work and often with children with severe arfid food chaining leads to foods being lost. You also need to ensure that anything made is exactly the same all of the time or foods will get lost. Even changing packaging can cause foods to disappear. I’ve mentioned daughter above, she has an exceptionally limited diet (no junk food but will only eat food with little to no nutritional value). She is underweight and relies upon meal replacement shakes. I can guarantee that everyone judging on the thread has handed their child more treats than have ever passed the lips of my daughter.

Diet has a huge influence on behaviour though so they should be worried.

So, you wrote a response to tell me you weren’t responding. As opposed to just…not responding.

Alrighty.

And people have explained it multiple times.

When you have a child who will absolutely refuse to eat anything - including white bread, or pasta, or breadsticks, or cucumber - then you try Quavers, because a packet of UPF cheesy crisps is better than another meal where your child screams, gags and vomits over their plate. Again.

So does starving and failure to thrive.

not totally on track but I CANNOT eat any kind of cooked brassica. To me they small bad and taste bitter. Sprouts are particularly bad. Its not long been discovered about "supertasters" whose genetic makeup make us particularly sensitive to bitter tasting things. Some people even have extra taste buds that taste bitterness right at the back of the mouth/throat so that bitterness can be tasted as they swallow. When I was a child at school, they tried to make me eat greens and said I was just being "awkward" Luckily my parents just accepted that I didn't like greens and never made a fuss about it. I do wonder what else will be discovered about the way we taste and sense orally and how it will affect knowledge of issues like ARFID? PS in my early 70's, just like you, too late to start!!

Your child was making themselves unwell and not eating, and you didn’t offer them beige because you didn’t want to?

Surely you’d offer them everything on the planet to get them to eat something.

If someone offered me pasta cooked in bone broth I would immediately taste the difference and refuse to eat pasta again because I wouldn't trust it.

Yes - but many children wouldn’t have a clue.

Irrespective - pasta has more nutritional value and than quavers which was my point.

Do you have child with SEN?

look at the infant mortality rate and the types of food they live off.