Food Anxiety: When Eating Becomes a Struggle

In this week’s episode of The Autism Mums Podcast, we talk openly about what happens when eating stops feeling simple and starts feeling scary. We unpack ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) and explore how it differs from 'picky eating, sharing our real-life experiences.

Key Takeaways

• Identical packaging and familiar brands can build trust.
• Safe foods can be very limited, for some children under 10 items
• When anxiety spikes with transitions like back-to-school often shrink food choices.
• “They’ll eat if they’re hungry” advice can escalate fear and refusal.
• Texture, temperature, smell, colour and broken food can be deal-breakers.
• We've found reintroducing once-safe foods during calm periods and follow the child’s curiosity can sometimes be successful

Mentioned in This Episode

BEAT Eating Disorders

ARFID Awareness UK

National Autistic Society

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Transcript

Victoria Bennion:

Hello and welcome back to the Autism Moms podcast. Today we're talking about

something that many families quietly battle with every day. When eating stops

feeling simple and starts feeling scary. You'll hear us mention ARFID quite a

lot.

Natalie Tealdi: ARFID

is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, which is more commonly known as

ARFID. It's a condition characterized by , the person avoiding certain foods or

types of foods having restricted intake in terms of overall amount eaten or

both?

Any anyone of any age can have a i. It occurs in children,

teenagers, and adults. Although people with ARFID may lose weight or have low

weight, this is not a criteria for ARFID. It can occur at any weight and varies

in different people.

Victoria Bennion: If

you are wondering, is this just picky eating? We'll talk about a few signposts

that could indicate it may be more. We'll share our family's [00:01:00] experiences and the ways we found to

support our children. As always, we are here to share our own experiences in

the hope that they may be useful.

Not to diagnose. If anything you hear raises concerns, do speak

with your GP or a qualified clinician.

Natalie Tealdi: So

Victoria, I think you have the best knowledge out of both of us on this one. Do

you wanna talk a bit about your

experiences?

Victoria Bennion:

Yeah. I can talk about our experiences. So my son doesn't have a diagnosis of a

ARFID, but in his autism diagnosis, he's noted as having ARFID behaviors. This

was explained to me as the reason was there very strict criteria that a child

had to meet to actually get a diagnosis of ARFID.

That you can have behaviors and a lot of autistic children are

affected by a ARFID,

And so this is because. Many autistic people experience sensory

issues and sensory [00:02:00] overload, and

that then leads to a heightened sensitivity when it comes to eating, resulting

in the symptoms and behaviors of ARFID.

Natalie Tealdi: How

would you say, you know, if it's picky eating or if it's ARFID?

Victoria Bennion: I

can talk about that with my son. If you're looking at your child, and are

wondering if this is more than picky eating, so things to be aware of or are

they avoiding major food groups? I know my son certainly was. So fruit, meat,

vegetables are they reacting to the different temperatures?

Are they having sensitivity to the textures? Could they be

gagging, retching? Have they gone over that spell of, they're not toddlers

anymore. They may be plus six. That's something to consider. And if their diet

is limited, I believe it's to less than 10 foods. That's another indicator of

ARFID or a behaviors.

Perhaps not noticing that they're hungry. I know that's

something my son certainly struggles with, [00:03:00]

identifying that he's hungry or just missing meals entirely. Avoiding food at

social events or avoiding social events where there is food Parties were always

so difficult for us. We would never sit at the food table.

We would have to go well away from that. Thank you very much.

Struggling to stay at the table during meal times.

In terms of timeline. I think he was about one and a half what

he would eat really narrowed. But that's quite common for this sage group and

it's often called food neo phobia. And I took him to the doctor at the time,

and I was just told that he would outgrow it. It was picky

eating. It was very normal for this stage of development. I don't know. I went

with that at the time. I was a bit uneasy about it. The things that he was

eating were waffles and I think it was probably fish finger. I've got this

written down somewhere because we did take him to an occupational therapist at

the time because it was really concerning.

We didn't think [00:04:00] he

was eating enough. The only fruit he would eat was raspberries at that time.

And then interestingly, it had to be a specific number of raspberries. And he

clearly was very anxious around eating. It was real anxiety about eating foods.

So he just said the same thing over and over every day.

I think the GP said to me that around five, he would've

outgrown it. And it was before that we took him to the occupational therapist.

'cause she's the one that gave me quite an interesting assessment, which I

didn't realize at the time that she must have been thinking along the autism

lines.

'cause she observed a lot of other things in his behavior and

when I went back to that, when we were going through the diagnosis process

yeah, it was interesting to see what she picked up, like lining up the toys,

grouping them by order of color, things like that. But in terms of the food, so

she gave us some tips at that time and it was to try to get him to play with

food. Touch [00:05:00] food. So I remember we

used to do it, we used to get different bowls out of different textured foods,

and it was really me playing with it. He would touch it a bit, but the idea was

that eventually he would, get some under his hands and lick it. But he never

did.

He never did. So his diet really didn't expand from what it was

about one and a half. Still principally the same things he eats at 11.

There has been some expansion, but we've also lost some safe

foods, but it's not hugely different.

Natalie Tealdi: Okay.

And so when it came to the early stages of when it was all

changing and his foods were reducing, what sort of behaviors were you seeing

then? Was he getting upset

Victoria Bennion:

Really upset about the food and just fully refusing, but yet very upset with

the refusing. His speech was delayed so he didn't have any words to be able to

tell us. I dunno if you remember when we went to Florida, so he was almost two,

[00:06:00] this was when it was very noticeable

and I remember before we left being so worried about what he would eat over

there. And we went to the supermarket when we got there and bought Oreos. He

was eating Oreos, still eats Oreos, and he would eat chips and sometimes he

would eat chicken nuggets at that point. So that's mainly what he had the whole

time we were there. I do remember there was one day where he tried a cube of

watermelon,

Natalie Tealdi: Okay.

Victoria Bennion:

That was it.

And as I said, he didn't speak at that time, so he couldn't

communicate. Exactly what the problems were. I was thinking because he had some

food sensitivities that they seem to run in our family for dairy. So we had

trouble with dairy and I was wondering if it was anything related, it was maybe

food allergy line at that point, at about one and a half, but I think that was

just separate.

Natalie Tealdi: And

do you find the appearance of food makes a difference to him?

Victoria Bennion:

Yes, there's a [00:07:00] huge difference. So

there was, when he was in reception they were doing an activity with potatoes

and they were making it into faces, and he was so horrified at the look of the

potato that he had to be. Taken to join a different year group in a different

classroom, away from the food, and it was at a parent's evening that the

teacher told me that they always had to remove him for any food related

activities.

Just the look of it just. He didn't wanna be in the same room

as it, and that's still a big issue. He'll talk about the horror of broken

food. Now he can talk and express it. And I realized that he thinks pretty

differently about food than than I do for sure. And the other morning, as we've

talked before, he has a very restricted diet.

It's not what you would class as a. As a healthy diet, I'm

sure. But fed is best. And we have to get the calories in. So he'll usually

start a [00:08:00] day. At the moment it's with

a Yorkie bar, and it was the first day going back to school, so already

anxious. And I went to check on him. I'd taken him the Yorkie.

He likes to eat by himself. That's another thing on the hold.

It's much more it's much more easier for him to eat on his own in his room. And

I said, how are you? How's everything? He said, terrible. I said, oh gosh,

what's the matter? Thinking school related anxiety? And he's the Yorkie's

broken in half.

I said, that's okay. We have about a hundred of them

downstairs. That's one for me. We will find you a whole one. It's that still

bothers him to the extent that it bothered him when he was tiny. If food is

broken food has to be just so when you cook for a child with.

ARFID behaviors, it's, you get used to it. So you asking me

about it, I'm having to think, what do we do? But honestly, so potato waffles,

they have to be perfect. And what perfect looks like has changed over the

years. So they used to need to be very lightly cooked to the bare [00:09:00] minimum. Then he went through a stage of

wanting them a bit more.

Well done now. It's somewhere in between, but they can't look

too brown. They can't have marks on them. And you wouldn't believe that

Birdseye, at one point they, they must have had a dodgy batch of potatoes. I

don't know. But there were black little spots in these waffles and. They come

out of the oven and I feel the horror.

I'm like, oh my God, he's never gonna eat. This is gonna be

rejected. So I i've spent ages trying to lift out the black bits and pat it

down so it doesn't look like it. Another thing is I've cooked them in a toaster

before and then they like curled up. , It's a real big deal trying to get it

right. And once I find that once it's wrong,

Natalie Tealdi: mm

Victoria Bennion:

it's not a case of, oh, we'll cook some new ones. We are done.

Natalie Tealdi:

Right.

Victoria Bennion:

might be that he can't face eating anything the rest of the night. It might be

that I can get crisps.

I say crisps, eat PO bears or a safe food [00:10:00] that's a snack food. We couldn't do

anything cooked again, unless it was McDonald's. McDonald's are trusted,

Natalie Tealdi: going

back to the waffles and the different looks and what's acceptable and what

isn't. Is he able to communicate? Why?

Victoria Bennion: He

told me the other day, 'cause you've been on fish fingers for a while, just one

fish finger. And he nearly threw up when he bit into one and he said it was

because it was too crunchy. And then it was soft and it was cold. I promised it

wasn't cold when I served it.

But then.

He'd spent quite a long time looking at it before he could get

up the courage to try it. So actually for the first time we've ditched anxiety

makes the eating worse for my son, which I believe is quite common.

Natalie Tealdi: Yeah.

Victoria Bennion: So

at stressful times, the food is gonna be the first thing that goes If it's, if

other things are going on that are really stressful, we really need to be on

the safe food. And certainly that week [00:11:00]

before they return to school. I think we went to McDonald's. It was three

times, four times, maybe that week, because McDonald's,

you get the same, don't you? Every time. It doesn't vary, and

then that creates feelings of safety. This was explained to me actually. I did

a BEAT eating disorder course a couple of years ago. It was one that the

SENDCO, his school recommended to me and it was so helpful. We were talking

about another thing that he really hated so he likes chocolate but soft

centers,

oh my goodness. The horror. If you bit into something and it

would say caramel in the middle, it would, really panicked and. The woman

taking the course explained to me, it's because of that trust factor.

So it looks like one thing on the outside. You bite into it.

It's not, it's something different. She said, take a blueberry for example,

looks blue on the outside. You bite into it, it's all white.

It's not the same [00:12:00]

texture. That course was so helpful to me in understanding it and understanding

why say, so raspberries were his solid fruit for a while until he had a sour

one.

And I think that's the difficulty isn't it? Was like live food,

non-processed food, that

Natalie Tealdi:

Particularly fruit.

Victoria Bennion:

particularly fruit. Sometimes it's sweet, sometimes it's sour, sometimes it's

firmer, sometimes it's softer and. If you are anxious and you don't trust that

food, so

It's very tricky.

Natalie Tealdi: I

mean we do have, similar with my son but most recently would you believe so he

has oat milk. And the other day he refused to drink it because he said it

tasted watery. And I thought, I was thinking, boy, it's the same one he has all

the time. And then I looked on the packet and it had the, you know the thing we

all fear, new recipe.

I thought, oh my [00:13:00]

goodness, that's what it is. They've changed the recipe and now he won't have

it.

Victoria Bennion:

They're so sensitive that they detect this. We've had this with foods too, or

even if it's the same that the package has changed,

Natalie Tealdi: Yes.

Victoria Bennion:

then that trust has gone again.

Natalie Tealdi: I've

had that with crisps, like they'd been running a promotion and he didn't want

to eat them because of this. The packet looked different because they had the

promotion on. It's like, why did he have to do that?

And do you find the safe foods change or are the safe foods,

and that's it.

Victoria Bennion: The

safe foods might come and go a bit, if I need to add a food back in, often the

first thing I'll try is a food that used to be on the safe list.

Natalie Tealdi: Yeah.

Victoria Bennion:

Sainsbury's want sent out these. Letters to the customers you may remember,

Natalie Tealdi: I do

Victoria Bennion: and

we got one saying that we have bought the most Mr.

Kipling angel cakes in the whole of the town. There [00:14:00] is not something that you

Natalie Tealdi: not

something to be proud of.

Victoria Bennion: not

something to be proud of, but there was a while when angel cakes were really a

massive part of his diet. And do you know why? Because they come individually

wrapped. They're rectangular, they look the same, except for when they don't.

But for a long time they were trustable cakes that came any,

home baked cakes that varied in their shapes and their sizes and their tastes

not so trustable when he was very tiny. Particularly angel cakes were the

staple. Now, things that make us lose it is. They can be a bit tricky to pull

apart.

I dunno if you've had this, the plastic can stick, sometimes it

lets a gap in and he had one and it wasn't as fresh. So they were off for a

while. He'll look around the side and check it. And sometimes they have a

little air bubble in there. And now he'll say to me, no, I can't have that

because of that.

When he was younger, he wouldn't express the why. It would be a

full, no. He can't then go on from there and [00:15:00]

debate why an air bubble would be a problem.

Sometimes I've tried. Eating it myself and saying, it's, it

doesn't do me any harm if that's what you're worried about. But he can't

articulate to that point what that problem is.

But yes, and back on the Angel case thing, the worst part of

that was just sainbury's. That didn't count the angel cakes that we bought at

Morrison's and the other shops as well.

Natalie Tealdi: Okay.

Victoria Bennion: And

we have expanded in recent years to burgers a little bit, and that though is

the McDonald's effect.

He has a good amount of trust in McDonald's. He had...