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?!?

It’s not normal for a toddler to have tried a crisp? I mean it is.

Do you have any actual experience or starting point of judgement?

Oh sweetie. It literally does. Use a professional source rather than judgement posters.

You (no one) HAS TO understand it. You don't have any right to expect to understand it. All you, and people generally, have to do is be accepting and respectful....and maybe a bit grateful that its not a bad place that you have to navigate.

"Oh sweetie" Are you intending to be patronising @Riaanna or once again can't you judge your tone appropriately?

Yes it’s perfectly normal for children to try these things.

And if they don’t meet them in toddlerhood they will once they begin school or socialising at children’s parties etc.

However, “ normal” eaters are quite capable of trying them without abandoning the other foods. Mine are “ normal” eaters and wouldn’t go more than a day if they did prefer beige food and weren’t getting it; they’d eat what was on offer. But what people are discussing here is children who don’t respond that way. At some point you have to cave as they need food.

Judge my tone? You have again missed context. What do you think my position is out of interest?

I know all of this.

yes i agree that it never completely goes , he still has got some issues around food - mainly what he calls slimy stuff, onions, mushrooms, baked beans etc are a few of the foods he’s never tried.
I think being in a new environment, mixing with new people who had no prior knowledge of his food issues and most of all a desire to “ fit in”. He wanted to join in with the social aspects of late night takeaways, the trips to the chinese restaurant etc. He just ate plain chicken to start with then added rice and over the 3 years he was at university could tolerate ( not sure he actually really enjoyed the eating part of the experience) a simple mild version of whatever his friends were having.
I expect it was also something to do with being away from me! However much I tried to be cool about his eating habits I know my anxiety got passed on to him.

Why is everyone assuming the child has AFRID and offering their own experiences as if they are uniform across the board of children?

The fact is that whilst AFRID might be an issue, the balance of probabilities suggests it likely isn’t and also, we cannot diagnose
from one OP alone. Meanwhile the children of our country are simultaneously getting fatter and yet nutrient deficient. The vast majority of kids chowing down on UPF/beige food have a preference their parents have allowed to perpetuate, they’re not all suffering from AFRID. It doesn’t help kids to start with the assumption that they are disordered and indulge their damaging eating habits.

Children do not have the cognitive skills or possess the knowledge to make choices about their diet which best serve their bodies, so of course if you start allowing them to make their own choices with no restrictions the vast majority will chose the safe, uniform, predictable foods - foods which are literally marketed at children and change their brain chemistry.

🤯

If your child has an eating disorder then by all means take the best course of action, which obviously isn’t going to be starving to death. But the best course of action for the vast majority of children isn’t a beige diet…

He hasn't grown out of it, hence the potato being on a seperate plate and no gravy. Whilst the list of foods may change a little over time, it doesn't ever become normal eating patterns.

That warrents a dietetics apt or nutritionist.

Again she wouldn't want those things if she hadn't been given them on tap often and growen a taste for them.

This thread is Mumsnet at its absolute fucking worst. Competitive smug parenting, competitive healthy eating, ableism, faux naivety… it needs its own bingo card.

I live in another country. The mother of one child at my daughter's nursery told me she puts puréed carrots in her daughter's milk because she otherwise would never have a single vegetable. And that child certainly isn't the only one there who refuses vegetables. A few will only eat their pasta plain. And multiple times I've picked up my child to be told she had 3 portions of fish because none of the others liked it and she kept asking for more. (My own child eats carrots, peas and broccoli consistently but won't touch beans of any kind, aubergine, cabbage or salad. And the only fruits she likes are bananas, grapes, apples and occasionally pears, but only at nursery - she won't touch them at home. She keeps saying she likes raspberries but when I buy them she just spits them out and says she doesn't like the seeds).

Threads about food or autism always go the same way - mix the two together and it's like a magnet for idiots.

I do believe AFRID etc are very real problems, but I do wonder whether they are problems we (society) have unknowingly brought on ourselves, almost another kind of eating disorder related to HPFs?

What happened 150 years age when Quavers and chicken nuggets didn’t exist? Did a lot of ND children just starve?

I get that Quavers will always be predictably the same, but so are frozen peas, and no child seems to crave those. I’m sure that the sensory experience and dopamine release these kinds of foods are designed to provide are also playing a role here.

@katkintreats of course they are - food industry literally invests millions in making us crave and eat their food.

I get that Quavers will always be predictably the same, but so are frozen peas, and no child seems to crave those. I’m sure that the sensory experience and dopamine release these kinds of foods are designed to provide are also playing a role here.

Frozen peas are not always the same.

I agree with you re. dopamine but I also think that we're exposed to so many different foods these days that it can actually be quite overwhelming.

What happened 150 years age when Quavers and chicken nuggets didn’t exist? Did a lot of ND children just starve?

Yes. Or they were force-fed. Or lived off a diet of bread and water, or their own version of "safe" foods. Mine was white rice with tomato ketchup.

It’s an interesting question.
Anecdotally I have heard that very picky cats will sometimes refuse to eat if you change their food, to the point they get ill and die. But then domestic cats aren't truly the animal kingdom are they, because we feed them highly processed junk food too. I’m not sure if it happens out in Nature.

Frozen peas will taste different and have varying textures if they're cooked for 5mins, 6mins or 7mins etc. Quavers are always the same.

It’s a small point to nit-pick, but provided you keep buying the same brand of frozen peas, I think they are actually more samey than Quavers. Quavers after all come in different shapes and sizes.

Agreed. And this week there's been a few which all sound a bit "off" in the wording.... Bots?

okay I will grant you that.

Yes, but Quavers always taste and feel the same no matter what size or shape they are.

Frozen peas don't - sometimes they're mushy, sometimes a bit crunchy. If they've been frozen strangely, they might be a bit watery (I know it sounds weird, but it's a thing). They're also not all the same size so when you cook them all for say, four minutes, some will be overcooked, some "just right" and some will feel undercooked.

Yep, I might do mine for 5, someone else might do them for 6. It's a running joke in our house not to cook something for 10 seconds too long (or short!). Not that's it's funny, but ARFID is actually quite a serious disorder and one must maintain their sanity somehow even if it's through slightly off humour about how difficult it can be to manage. .

Then there's peas and petis pois, how much salt is or isn't added, who's cooking it. My child has been able to express that eating the same food in different environments makes it taste different due to each environment having its own smell and how the olfactory system works. A safe food in one place may be not a safe food elsewhere. People really have no idea how sensitive ARFID children are to even the tiniest difference. Add in asd where anything different is a challenge in itself at the best of times.

OP's sisters kid may well not have ARFID or any other sensory issue.

However they are too little to voice what they're experiencing in a useful way, and the OP has no idea if they do or do not.

Taking a cautious approach with the possibility a child may have sensory issues/ARFID around food will do no harm at all if the child is actually just going through a normal developmental phase.

So taking pressure off by ensuring safe foods are present, but also that they are seeing people eating a range of foods, helping prep food, can choose to try foods if they want to... if the kid is NT then the range of foods they will eat will increase again.

And if they are NOT, then you won't cause the kinds of mental harm that so many of us have experienced as children!

I really don't understand what is so outrageous about taking a thoughtful 'do no harm' approach, vs the common, pretty much opposite approach 'assume child is being fussy and trying to control the parent and force them via varying levels of aversive behaviour to eat what they're given'.

Here's a thought experiment for you though, if you're genuinely interested in what a child with ARFID may be feeling.

Think of the most disgusting item ever, might be a food, might not be - goats eyeballs - lump of dog shit - someone elses cold sick - 100 year old egg - now imagine being co-erced to eat it.

Thats how can feel to be faced with unsafe foods and made to eat it.