ARFID: 'My son's not a picky eater; he's scared of food'

[Jilly_in_VA]

Crisps, dry crackers and plain pasta may not be the most exciting foods but they are often the staples relied upon by children with a little-known eating disorder.

Nine-year-old Otto from Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, has the condition ARFID, which stands for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, meaning he avoids many different foods.

Otto says he would like to try new things, but often feels scared.

"It sometimes feels like food is inedible," he says.

"I feel like I'm either going to gag or throw up. I'm not familiar with the taste and that just makes my body feel like 'oh my gosh, this isn't like something you've had before...what is it? what is it?'.

"Then my body tries to get rid of it, which makes me gag."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-59688396
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I had never heard of this, but thinking back, I remember a little boy in the daycare where I worked who may have had it.

[tblue37]

1. I have a friend with it. She managed to eat healthy foods, but only a limited number of them.

[luvs2sing]

2. Wow..there's a name for it.

I’ve had food issues like this all my life, but much worse when I was a child. I think I can pinpoint it to the day when I was a toddler and was eating wide buttered noodles. A noodle flattened out on my tongue about halfway down my throat, and I started choking. My dad had to reach his fingers in my throat and pull out the pieces of noodle. I was never the same about food after that, and I still can’t deal with anything but the thinnest noodles.

I’m sure I ate fewer than twenty foods when I was a kid and, even though I’ve grown out of it a lot, I still have what Hubster calls “texture issues”. No eggs, no milk, nothing with a runny or slimy texture. I love to cook, but my friends nicknamed me “The Picky Foodie”.

[Probatim]

4. Coconut milk is the only ingredient that causes me to have that reaction.

I remember the first time I had it in Asian cooking - one bite and I was done. I was sitting there thinking "I'm a grown man and can't take another bite of this or I'll hurl."

That was 20 years ago and I won't try it again.

[Quakerfriend]

3. Interesting. I knew a little boy

who only ate chicken nuggets & they had to be from McDonalds- this went on until age 7.

I believe that “Super Nanny” delt with a British child who suffered from this condition, as well.

[Happy Hoosier]

5. My daughter has ARFID

As a result of PTSD. She had to spend 2 months in a residential eating disorders center last year. She had dropped to 95 pounds… the doctors were worried for her health.

Fortunately, she really wanted to recover and despite hating being in the place, she has recovered.

She still struggles with it most days, but she is doing pretty well.

Unfortunately, most treatment centers don’t actually treat ARFID per se. They treat it as if it were Anorexia or Bulimia. My wife found some papers on treating ARFIDand that had helped her caregivers.