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?!?

Yeah, I think I do if I’m honest. Fifty years ago children did not have these issues - whether they were neurodiverse or not.

I'll tell my 70 year old dad that all his food issues didn't exist, then

You do know that not all AuDHD people are the same and there are many, many different co-morbidities. Does your child have gender dysphoria, do they have epilepsy, do they have gastro-intestinal problems, do they have a sleep disorder? If they don't, do you think that all of the people who have AuDHD alongside these other very common co-morbidities are making it up for shits and giggles???

Your poor child.

Well I’m 50yo so they did. Though admittedly my mother didn’t tolerate it and would make me sit at the table until I’d eaten the lumpy mashed potato. I remember sitting there crying and gagging for hours, no exaggeration, as I was not allowed to leave the table. If it got to 9pm my mum would lose her shit and force feed me while slapping me and pulling my hair. Funnily enough i didn’t do that with Dd.

I was once so fed up with my then 5yo "fussy" eater refusing the healthy food I'd cooked that I bullied him into eating some chicken and he vomited all over the kitchen floor and then was hysterical for the rest of the evening.

I haven't done it since and I will never do it again. It simply isn't worth it. Instead, we offer new foods alongside the tolerated ones and hope that eventually he might enjoy a wider range of food.

That is patently ridiculous. Just showing ignorance. Why are you on this thread reading all the distressing examples and you still persist in this judgy nonsense!

And it's the nature of a site like this that anyone can respond to any other posts.

So true - I get this with my autistic ARFID child all the time with people trying to help. It's awful and really hard work and it took us ages to get any help - and even with a diagnosis and advice from CAMHS dietician to feed said DC all the beige food (obviously plus some extra strategies to attempt to broaden range of foods) I still feel like I am doing something wrong and it is all my fault for doing something wrong at early years. Once on holiday at about 16 months we ran out of foods DC would eat and he survived on milk for several days as refused anything else so I think what your DSis says isn't ridiculous. There is lots of advice out there about food chaining etc but if she hasn't asked for advice then I think just be supportive

It's an undeniable fact that a child brought up in a society where there are no such things as Honey Nut Cornflakes or Monster Munch will not refuse to eat until they get some.

@Ashlll. I think unless you have a child with sensory issues it’s really hard to understand. I have twins- one who is neurotypical and one who is autistic with sensory issues. They were weaned and introduced to food in the exact same way.
One absolutely loves her food- isn’t always great at trying new foods but she eats a really good varied diet.
My little boys diet is so much more restrictive- a lot of plain pasta, bread, wraps. He will eat fruits and vegetables, but has a lot of sensory things so eating out in a cafe/restaurant for a meal is pretty much a no go . He is very particular about how things taste and feel. He is slowly improving, but if I don’t have the foods that he likes he will definitely NOT eat it, no matter how hungry he is. He then gets upset because he’s hungry, so will then cry.

It takes him a lot longer to like food- an example. He likes croissants and he likes chocolate, so you would think chocolate croissants (pain au chocolate) would be ok. Well everyone else likes them, so have them as a wee treat every other weekend. He helps make them, sets the table, we chat about it and explain how it will taste etc. It took him over a 1 year of helping make them every other weekend to finally try it 🙄.

My mother had this. She spent whole evenings as a child sat in front of a plate of mince and dumplings. It would be put in the fridge and re-served to her at breakfast the next day.

What a waste of time. I can't imagine disliking my child sufficiently to make them miserable like this, but my grandmother was a child of the war and couldn't abide waste. My grandmother apologised to my mother several times later on in life for this (also for hitting her with a slipper).

Or even better if they don’t know it exists
especially at this age

It's not as simple as just not offering beige. My DD is in remission from ARFID. It started as a baby. She had severe reflux, and then had major surgery and didnt have the energy to take her milk. We were in and out of hospital so she could be treated for dehydration via an NG tube.

She had to have a long term NG tube fitted at 3 months old... And then she had another major surgery a few weeks later. She was also failure to thrive although we're unsure if that was a contributing factor.

We tried weaning at 17 weeks because the only milk she could tolerate was relatively low calorie and the volume of milk she needed to gain was unsustainable. DD refused all homemade purees, she tried a few jars but ultimately ended up consistently rejecting those as well. We tried BLW she would play with the food but not eat it. At this stage she wouldn't even drink water. The Paediatrician and dietitian said to see if DD would eat things like rusks or biscuits because at that stage it was about the calories. She would occasionally suck a rusk or wotsits.

By the time she was one the Paediatrician just said to try and get whatever I could into DD. She wouldn't even take water. They realised her ARFID was likely trauma related and because she could feel the NG when she swallowed.

At 14 months she had a Peg tube fitted, and she started taking SOME things orally. But she wouldn't take enough "healthy" food to sustain herself. And if DD was offered something she didn't eat, she would refuse all food and milk for 3 days and lose weight. So the Paediatrician again told us to try junk food as a last resort. At one point, DDs diet consisted of mashed potato, baked beans, jaffa cakes, chocolate, rusks, wotsits. I put her in nursery so she had the "peer pressure" of eating, and she did eat at nursery but she refused food anywhere else.

We then managed to get her to eat pigs in blankets out of nursery. Her Christmas dinner one year consisted of baked beans and pigs in blankets

Thankfully we managed to work through her trauma and introduce new foods at home, and by age 7 DDs diet was relatively normal. BUT the scars of her active ARFID remain. At age 12, If a familiar food has an unexpected change (e.g a bit of gristle), she won't eat it again for months. The same if she has a negative experience with a food. Dd also has a very strong preference for salty and crunchy foods.

Sorry for the long LONG story. But I wanted to show it's not as simple as just not offering the beige food..these issues often start at a very young age.

DD has since been diagnosed with ASD and sensory processing disorder, but we don't actually know whether these are contributing factors to the difficulties she had, because she was so young when it started.

I don’t have ARFID but I do have loads of sensory issues around food and lots of foods I can’t eat but would happily live off steak or salmon and steamed broccoli. The smell of chicken nuggets makes me sick and I can’t eat McDonald’s except for the chips or Quavers.
One of my DC only likes really strongly flavoured or spicy food and has done from being tiny, anything bland like plain rice or pasta, mashed potatoes makes him heave. He can’t stand things like cottage pie or casserole and will only eat a roast if it’s cooked with loads of herbs. He had to sit on his own in infants for lunch because so many children had fridge raiders or lunchables and he can’t bear the smell and used to get upset.

Well, would be like my sister in the 1960's. I posted earlier about it. She would only eat kidneys and oranges for a quite a long time.

I remember spending hours sat at the table in tears because my parents tried to force me to eat foods I didn’t like. I’d sit there and gag constantly, douse my food in mint sauce because it took the taste away. I would eventually eat what was on my plate but not because I was hungry enough (as people suggest here), but because I was too terrified of my parents to not do so.

If I’d felt able to starve myself, I’d have done it rather than eat those foods. As an adult, I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve eaten vegetables on their own (not hidden in a strong flavoured sauce) aside from ones like baked beans.

So there’s the flip side of this “parents should just stand firm and not offer anything else”. Yes, it might get the child to eat the food on offer, but it destroys your relationship with them and gives them lifelong traumatic memories and as soon as they leave home they just revert back to the same issues you thought you’d forced out of them.

You're not grasping this are you?

I certainly would have noticed as a toddler that my pasta didn't taste 'right', regardless of whether I knew exactly what was in it/on it/it had been cooked in.

I can tell the difference between brands of bread served as plain toast or even a toasted sandwich. I can tell when my partner has put too much powder in the dishwasher. I can taste the milk on the turn two days before he can.

My sense of taste was even stronger as a child, I could taste when things had been in the fridge next to something else, even once the thing had been cooked.

As an adult I can push through some of those things now... because I am an adult and I know 'its just the dishwasher powder im tasting'..

As a child, not knowing food had been altered somehow, regardless of whether that was because an adult was trying to trick me or it was just accidental,destroyed trust in my food and reduced the foods I'd eat.

As for the 'what if children didn't know beige food existed'...

Well I didn't. As I said earlier, I was weaned onto pureed versions of whatever the adults were having and my Mother cooked from scratch and was a good cook.

The 'beigest' foods available would have been pasta, brown bread, rice or potatoes, there was never sugar in the house, she very rarely ever made cakes, there might occasionally be a digestive biscuit or a rich tea but never anything more extravagant than that...

That didn't change until we were 10 or 11, when my Dad hit the roof and started a massive and memorable argument about it as he did want the odd dessert/biscuit etc (this would also tie in with him retiring and not having access to the tea and biscuit trolly at work where such things were supplied!!)

My food refusals/avoidance were not 'I want something ELSE' they were 'I can't eat this but I am still painfully hungry* and that remains the case.

I 'same food' a lot - sometimes thats not the most healthy thing (quorn dippers, interesting I never ate chicken dippers as a child and hate the texture of chicken!) - sometimes it is though, for months through summer I had a finely chopped salad every day, until as I say, ingredients got more expensive/went out of seasona nd things like apples started to be floury and bland.

ARFID is certainly not about refusing to eat certain foods in order to be offered other, nicer, sweeter, fattier foods.

In reply to someone up thread - it is very limiting and can be stressful - I am currently worrying about a work event at the end of bloody June, where I will meet my work colleagues for the first time and have to eat in front of them. I have already checked the hotel menus and think it'll be ok but I really won't know until the day and will continue to be anxious about this until its done!

However compared to my life as a child... it is a million times easier. I can attempt to voice why I can't eat certain things, what is wrong with them, why this McDonalds fry is acceptable but that pile there are all duds...and can figure out what might be acceptable, what I can try safely... and I can do all this without pressure or being mocked or abused in my own home.

Children just can't do that, they haven't the life experience or vocabulary to do that, they don't have the control over what comes into the house, how things are cooked, they don't have the knowledge to make suggestions.

And sadly many are mocked, bullied and abused by those around them who should be supporting them.

Of course it existed then.
I posted about my sister upthread.
The difference to then and now is what is available.
And my mother just let her eat the 2 things she would (as she was so underweight).

She did have issues at primary school too I remember as the school dinners were shockingly awful and she had that great 196's experience of being forced to sit in the dining hall until she ate some hideous slop served to her.
I remember her refusing to go to school. My mother got to the bottom of it and she had packed lunch after (rare in those days).

@SleeplessInWherever i followed advice from our hospital consultant and yes I did not feel the need to offer rubbish processed food. We worked all together via experts. Ds had a good healthy sources of food. He knew nothing of food like nuggets so why would we offer them? At now 18 eating a nugget would not be something ds would want to eat. I am not going to continue to defend myself for not feeding my dc what i feel is not great food, however as I said in my original post, having been through all this I fully understand why some do and this is absolutely personal choice.

Children generally eat what their parents eat.
Shock, horror, from a very young age.
If you, as a parent, do not eat a "colourful", wholesome diet, then your children won't either.
It is what children are given to eat, that influences their choices.

As others have said, some kids just won't eat if it isn't their safe foods. I have a 5 Yr old and a 3 Yr old, both bf, both raised on the same food (in fact, the 3 Yr old probably had a wider variety as we had to sign everything on her nursery menu off), the 5 Yr old will watch curry, loves stew with lentil, will eat a bean salad....and the 3 year old will barely eat pasta with sweetcorn. In fact, she's gone off nuggets recently as the outside is 'bad'. She will refuse to eat, even if she is hungry. But she's also picky with 'junk', even today she refused shop bought flap jack bars.

We are firm about her eating things we know she will tolerate. She does love fruit. But if she could exist on porridge, crisps, fruit and chips she would.

I remember when my eldest was about 2.5 she barely ate anything, it was really demoralising and frustrating. The last thing you want to see is your child not eating. She has also been through a stage where she only ate pasta(no sauce) and cucumber. I think you need to remember no parent is actively seeking out for their child to be fussy. Both my kids have good appetites, do they eat the healthiest things, no but they are fed and not going hungry. I focus on the positives, they both love fruit and I always make sure they have some fresh bits with their dinners, carrots, cucumber, pepper, tomatoes etc.

have you done any research into it? Because it’s well researched and easily explained.

Well that's mainly due to to the fact "beige goods" tend to always be the same.

Broccoli or any veg really can completely change in taste and texture depending on how it's cooked. Even apples don't always taste the same. That's why stuff that doesn't change is considered "safe"

Personally (well according to my mother) until the age of 5 i would eat anything and everything. Except at aged 5 I developed a milk intolerance that severely limited what I could eat and also had the horrendous effects of me having violent diarrhoea (which you can imagine as a kid was rather embarrassing). After that I became far more "fussy". I've tried to explain that it isn't simply that I won't try stuff, I actually have but I am extremely sensitive to tastes and textures. Which as a result means at 38 the only veg I can eat is peas, carrots and sweetcorn. The last time I tried to eat salad I literally did have a panic attack. I am someone who if you said "you for the next week can only eat unlimited salad or absolutely nothing" would genuinely end up eating nothing. I would rather starve than force myself through the experience of eating foods that have textures/flavours/sensations etc that make me feel like want to be sick.

Edit: also not sure if its related to neurodivergece but I am diagnosed ADHD

There’s also an evolutionarily element to it. Coloured things are more likely to be poisonous / cause harm.

@Jacarandill
the article posted upthread with intel from Professor Williams a paediatrician specialising in food disorders agrees.

The rise in upf foods has led to a rise in eating disorders.