Eating food out of the can.

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I live in Arizona. I'll set can out on my patio during the summer to heat them. The food gets comfortably warm.

spaghettios are good right outta the can

I feel the same way about silverware. I never use it when I can use my hands, or even just my mouth.

I'm guilty of eating tuna straight out of the can pretty often. I don't think it's a general autistic trait since many neurotypical will do the same as well, and it does not just limit to eating out of a can. It can also be drinking milk out of the carton, eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon or index finger, etc.

Just threw a few dabs of Mayo into a tuna can for a quick snack.

I'm finna (fixing to) bust into one of those Boyardee ravioli mini styrofoam cans as I cruise the rest of the forum

I don't think that this has anything to do with Aspergers if I'm honest. Except maybe not caring so much presentation.

A middle aged foriegn guy who lived in our group house when I was in college would cook food on the stove right in the can the food came in.

Just open the top- and -viola- the can itsself served as the sauce pan- holding the chef boyardi ravoli while it cooked on the flames.

Well... my mom never did it that way- so I would gawk at it.

In later years I would try that technique. Trouble is that you have to do it just right or the food over flows the top and makes a mess. And its alot harder to avoid knocking over an upright can than it is to avoid knocking over a sauce pan. So I dont do that anymore.

what a great idea! it would be even better if canned food makers all put handles on the cans to facilitate the process.

Handles on cans are a cute idea but the prices would skyrocket!

it wouldn't cost any more than those cans that have the built-in flip tabs.

This actually does relate to autism - not can-eating specifically, but the need to make practical tasks like cooking have as few steps as possible. This is because of motor planning difficulties/dyspraxia.

If a neurotypical person wants to cook some food from a can, their brain automatically calculates a process as follows: pick up can opener, pick up can, open tin, get pan, pour contents into pan, place pan on stove, turn on heat, wait for food to cook, find plate, transfer food to plate, eat food (of course it's usually a more complex process than this because other kinds of food will be involved as well). Their body will then automatically follow this plan. At no point do they ever even have to think about it - it just happens.

If the person has motor planning difficulties, however, which is common in autism, their mind does not automatically create a plan like this and the body does not automatically follow it. We have to figure out the plan manually and concentrate on every step of the process to do it right. This can be hard work, and it's the reason we usually need to do things in exactly the same sequence of steps every time (so we can memorise the sequence instead of trying to work it out every time), and with as few steps as possible (so it's not like trying to work out a complex maths equation every time we want to eat) and why we are thrown if something unexpected comes up which interferes with our usual sequence of steps.

I struggle a lot with many-step processes like preparing food and have a sizeable collection of probably-not-very-polite-or-necessarily-hygenic shortcuts to try to make such tasks as simple as possible, avoid having to wash extra dishes, etc. If I didn't, when I was hungry I'd probably just stand and stare into the fridge looking bewildered.

This might help to explain the larger-than-normal number of can-eaters here.

^^^
nailed it. some days, everything is just so damned HARD!

I find myself doing that a lot these days. Sometimes the thought of rooting around in the freezer to find something palatable seems to involve too many steps to prepare or is too messy or time-consuming, and I find myself reaching for a granola bar every 20 minutes instead. But my eating-from-the-package phenomenon isn't new by any stretch; I've gotten flak by eating dry ramen since I was a teen, and I used to eat vegetables this way much more frequently until I saw a Simpsons episode where Otto the bus driver was living on their couch and at one point he says "man I could sure go for a can of corn". But chili, Spaghetti-Os, and beef stew: every chance I get