Those of you with food aversions/issues - can you explain?

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My area of expertise!! !

Lol. I was one of those children who refused to be breastfed. They had to test out a variety of brands of milk and allegedly I would only drink one - my mother still laughs about how I picked out the one that tasted the worst.

My earliest memories involve worrying about food. When I was around three, I remember consciously making the decision to put my foot down as to what I wasn't going to eat, and to this day... I've not become a "free-eater".

1) PRESENTATION -

Separate > Mixed. If a meal can be separated out into it's ingredients, it was easier to eat. Google "pelau". My sister would separate peas, rice, carrots, corn, meat... And I'd eat it grain by grain.

Dry > Wet. The drier, the better. Too many sauces trigger disgust. Ketchup was okay, or mustard. By around ten I could combine the two, and use small amounts of gravy also, by about 13 I could do curry. My mother would bake my meals to dry them out for me. I don't know how this works, but I prefer to have a drink and eat desiccated food than to have anything that's still "juicy"

Colour Bland is better. That wheat pasta colour. More than three colours evoke suspicion. I was in my twenties by the time I was good with pizza with more than 2 toppings (Hawaian is still the only one i'm good with), and I still have to prep myself for Neapolitan Ice Cream.

Certain colours have to be avoided too. Eggplant purple for example. Any colours too dark, like greens, or too bright, like yellows. Bland pastel stuff is easiest. Like apples, and pears, for fruits as opposed to strawberries.

Exposure Box is good, eg, fast food boxes > Plastic container (get dark ones that don't stain) > plates (get ones without a lot of grooves or ornamentation).

Flat white ceramic is best for me. Disposable white plates straight from a pack are good too. Let him have his own dishes that he doesn't see other people using.

2) TEMPERATURE

Heat Scalding, steaming hot is the only way to go. If it needs someone to blow it, let the child do it or put it in front of a farm. Once I get that food scalding hot, even the worst things get more edible.

Cold works as long as it's cold. Mildly chilled is bad. Lukewarm is the worst. Lukewarm milk is... Lukewarm milk kept me out of school for about a week because I just couldn't stop vomiting.

3) CONSISTENCY

Transparency Kool-aid/ bottled water is the easiest thing for me to drink out of a glass. If you can see through it, it's good.

Mixture Generally, Solution>Colloid> Suspension is how I have it worked out in my head. Any kind of drink that has stuff in it that settles? Ugh. The more watery a thing is, the easy it is for me to convince myself to eat it. Eg., watermelon and cucumber > pineapple > tomatoes > guava. If you're thinking about fruits.

4) SCENT - some scents are as noxious as say burning tires or rotting bodies are to normal people. I've had to take vomit breaks sometimes just from passing in front of a Subway restaurant with an open door.

5)TEXTURE -
crunch > squish. Eg, Raw vegetables > cooked ones. Burnt crispy food > tender food. Crackers > jello. Crispy burnt eggs > wet messy raw eggs

6)TRUST of SOURCE -

Brands - I can eat fried chicken only from KFC. Just yesterday I increased my Pizza places up to 2. I've been experimenting with Chinese food, and now, I have up to five different places I've eaten Chinese food from, because I think I've done something racist and blended all the cooks into one complete set of Chinese people who are indistinguishable from one another. (I'm still trying to figure how Chinese wood work. Started when I was fifteen, and now, i'm like a pro at eating it without too much fussing. Been maybe a year since I vomited Chinese food back up)

The Cook The number of people who's food I can eat have dwindled down to one. Just my brother. And he's on tenuous ground. I've started cooking for myself, but in the beginning when I was your son's age and through those kindergarten years, I remember giving everyone a chance. And if you did something wrong too many times, that was it, trust was gone. Eg. My grandmother wouldn't stop putting onion in the cheese-paste, so I stopped eating from her when I was maybe 6.

7) TASTE - probably the least important variable. Food getting into my mouth was the problem when I was your son's age, getting it in and keeping it in.

SOCIAL CONTEXT - social pressure to eat, shaming, "Spotlight eating" can work from time to time but it's really traumatizing and overall, family bonding tends to suffer. I had to eat with the nuns when I was in kindergarten under the pictures of Jesus and the cross. Eating for Jesus would get me to do it, but they'd also have to call the ambulance from time to time when half-an-hour later I was projectile vomiting.

My mother used to try "Trading" things I wanted to have or do with eating. Eg, I missed out on seeing Pocahontas because I had to eat Mackerel and lentil stew in order to go and as much as I wanted to go, I couldn't and I think I cried for 2 days and I can't look at that movie or Vanessa Williams without thinking about that.

It's hard, and my mother tried, but with some effort you can figure it out, so that you're son doesn't end up malnourished or throwing up in a pediatric ward.

It's a psychological problem of disgust for me, primarily. Some of the things I see people eating, I wonder, "Jesus, how does your brain work where that's edible?" Mayonnaise literally crawls my blood. It's the kind of biological repulsion a normal person might have from eating snails or slugs or something.

The main thing I would suggest is to not try to force your kid to push back that disgust threshold. Even as an adult who understands how nutrition works and that what I have is essentially a disorder, I still can't forgive some of what my parents did with their good intentions.

Simple meals are really a complicated process. Eating is seriously probably the most stressful thing I do because there's just so many combinations possible. One very wrong thing might trump all the good things and it's frustrating - eg, when my mom made a whole jug of juice just to my settings alone, I wouldn't drink it because the jug she used had had milk in it maybe a month before... I was angry because obviously you can't put juice in a jug that once had milk in it, and she was angry because, well, time and money had gone into it...

I'd suggest going slow, lots of friendly communication where he doesn't feel punished or forced, and keeping a track of what goes right and what goes horribly wrong.