Fear orf Food

[Katherine]

DSs best friend seems to have a total fear of food which is causing huge problems for his family, at school and whenever he visits friends, such as us.

He (5) is a bit of a handful. He is prone to shouting, disruptive behavior, emotional outbursts and has a very very short attention span. All of this is probably unrelated but may also indicate something else going on.

He is allergic to nuts and to fish (had a very bad reaction at age 1) and is now impossible to feed. Present himn with anything and he immediatly says "Don't like it". He won't try anything and won't even touch the food. The only things he eats are baked beans, weetabix, white bread, mashed potato and chocolate biscuits etc. He won't eat cake, fruit, vegetables - anything else at all in fact. He just looks horrified.

His mum is in despair. His peadiatrician has said he is afraid of food due to his reactions and she should stick with it and build up his trust but it means he is always singled out and eating differently. My reaction was to leave him and he will eat when hungry (a bit severe maybe but she's desperate) but she says shes left him up to a couple of days before and he still won't eat.

I suggested he should be seeing a psychologist familiar with eating disorders rather than an allergy specialist.

I think his food obsession might be related to his other behaviour problems (aspergers? ADHD?) but I'm not sure and daren't make any suggestions which might be inappropriate.

How would you handle this degree of fussiness? Would you get tough or follow the paeds advice and build trust. Things don't seem to be progressing though and his mum is very distraught.

Any suggestions or advice? Could it be that he really is just scared of food and if so how on earth do you work round that?

My ds is a little bit like this. He is very fussy and has a very restricted list of foods he will eat. Basically for dinner this is: mince (but only in a loyd grossman tomato and basil sauce , cheese and tomato pizza (as long as the tomato is only tomato puree and not actual tomatos, God forbid), omlettes and french toast. He will also eat soup as long as it's either Heinz tomato or vegetable soup pureed to a mush.
I think that he also is scared of food. We have had tears and hysterics when he has been invited to a friends for tea or if we go out for a meal (very rare occasions) from the thought that he might be confronted with 'strange food'. He has never even tried things that other kids love like pasta, sausages, chicken etc.
Unfortunately due to my extreme lack of success in getting ds to eat other foods I can offer very little advice except for the boy's parents to look at what he is eating and hopefully find that there is enough there to provide a (reasonably) healthy diet. At least my ds likes a few fruits and also milk and fromage frais. He is fairly healthy so to be honest I've given up trying to get him to try new things. It just isn't worth the hassle. We did, on my mum's advice, try to get him interested in cooking to see if this would help, but all he was prepared to cook was foods that he would eat anyway .
All I do now is hope that the happy day will come when he grows out of his fussiness.