I’m on the fence on this issue. My autistic ds is extraordinarily sensitive to taste and texture - he’d make a great wine connoisseur* because he can articulate it so well.
I started off preparing fresh, organic foods from scratch and blw. But he eliminated food groups when he was exposed to sweeter or highly processed food.
One example was that he was eating homemade brown bread with ham or cheese until he was given that bread with jam and refused to touch it with ham and cheese after that. When he tasted a white bread roll he stopped eating brown bread, and while out at a restaurant he had a couple of chips off someone’s plate, and then refused potato in any other form.
The pattern was obvious in retrospect, but not so clear at the time. And often the alternatives were treats from relatives who were quick to disregard my concerns as uptightness. I do think that if he hadn’t discovered these alternatives his diet would be cleaner. But probably would still be highly restricted, with a preference for safely predictable and repeatable sensations. There’s family history of that. One of my uncles only ate hard boiled egg yolks - never the white - and smooth mashed potatoes for dinner for a year .
A lot of beige convenience food is designed to be addictive, and to disrupt our eating patterns. But dc like mine are particularly susceptible. I think upfs definitely exacerbate an already difficult situation. I wish chicken nuggets didn’t exist.
It’s hard to convey the depth of resistance - most toddlers have to be cajoled through fussy stages but with ARFID it’s on a whole other level.
And then it all got so much worse during the school years when his stress levels skyrocketed and he needed home to be a safe haven. Meals aren’t just about nutrition, but also about comfort, and connection. There are only so many fronts you can battle on. Add in the need to provide a school lunch that he can and will eat in the stressful environment of a classroom.
With most dc, you can have a treat or eat these things on a particular day. But for us, if it existed, it became difficult to accept any alternative. And “he’ll eat when he’s hungry” is just not true.
We were lucky that we were able to expand the range of acceptable foods at a crucial stage, and develop an effective strategy to combat neophobia. But there is precious little competent help available. As a teen I’m managing to expand things a little by replacing some upfs with homemade alternatives. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job in being open minded and accepting of his needs so that he isn’t always defensive.
*editing to add that he doesn’t drink wine before I get flamed for that. But if he did he could probably identify every tiny detail.