Picky eating

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I am a picky eater. I have difficulty with complicated or unpredictable food. Like if food is mixed in with other food, I don't like eating it. (I am okay with salad though, because the vegetables don't ooze onto each other).

I find meat very problematic. First of all, it is unpredictable. When you bite into it, you never know what the texture will be like. Within the same piece of meat, you can get a million different textures and degrees of gristliness. Some bits are chewy and stringy, and you never know when a chewy bit is coming.

And the taste is really gross to me as well.

Finally, it is hard to contain the taste of meat if there is other food on the plate. The moment meat touches another food, the smell and taste of meat contaminates the other food. And when you eat the other food, you never know when it will taste normal and when it will taste meaty.

Food like biscuits, chocolate and lollies is a lot more predictable. Fruits and vegetables are not so predictable, but there is not the same gristle risk that there is with meat.

I also dislike cooked cheese, pizza with cheese, rice with any garnish, avocado, chicken, meat sauce, any bread other than white bread, the list goes on. I like a fair few individual foods, but not many full meals.

Does anyone else have issues like this? I thought it might be an autism-related thing.

I'm real sensitive to texture. If something has the wrong texture, I just can't eat it. I used to have a very sensitive sense of smell but I lost most of that when I had the flu once about twenty five years ago. For a long time, about the only food that had enough flavor that I could detect it was Indian food, which I couldn't stand before losing most of my sense of smell.

After losing most of my sense of smell, the only thing I was really able to judge food by was the texture and how it looked. I've always been a fairly picky eater, but the issue with smell aggravated it quite a bit.

I can't stand gristle in meat. If I'm cutting it up and find gristle, I'll cut it out. If I'm eating meat and hit gristle, I'll spit out the gristle and not touch that piece of meat again. I also trim off the fat because of the texture. I remember doing that as a kid but I don't know when I started doing it.

I don't eat cheese at all, especially the more natural and traditional cheeses. The only times I've eaten cheese was by accident. The slightest hint of most cheese makes me want to vomit -- I don't know if it is from the thought of cheese or if there is something more. From the rare time that I have accidentally eaten some, the more modern American cheeses that probably have more resemblance to plastic than to traditional cheeses don't seem to bother me at all, but I still avoid them.

By the way, food touching usually doesn't bother me much as long as the texture itself doesn't change. If I have bread on the plate and it gets soaked from liquids coming out of the foods on the plate, then I won't eat it. I usually get a separate plate for the bread for that reason.

On the other hand, there are some foods that I like best when mixed together. For example, mashed potatoes and field peas go well together.

By the way, my mashed potatoes are different from the way most people seem to make them. I think that most people mix in milk with the potatoes to make them creamy. To me, that's a terrible way to make mashed potatoes. I use only butter and keep mixing it in until I get the texture I want. I've heard that some chefs will make mashed potatoes that are roughly half potatoes, half butter. Mine are usually more like 10% butter and 90% potatoes. With my sense of smell, I can't taste regular mashed potatoes at all. I can taste them a little when I make them with butter.

Cream gravy on top of the mashed potatoes is also very good.

Also, with many foods, I tend to cook them together so everything gets mixed together while cooking.

For example, chicken, mushrooms, brussel sprouts, onions, and potatoes (start with nearly done potatoes) sauted together and then simmered in cooking wine served over pasta can be very good.

I am much the same. I am also not great with unpredictable foods, I like everything to taste the same. This is why I struggle with meat, although I eat it occasionally and often find eating it quite stressful. I have a very limited set of meals that I can eat, but fortunately I am relatively content to eat the same meals over and over again. I too find cakes, biscuits and desserts generally less unpredictable and therefore more attractive, but this is not very healthy. Often in a restaurant there is no main course or starter that I can manage, and this can be a little embarrassing.

I think that while there are lots of reasons for picky eating, issues relating to texture and unpredictability are likely related to Aspergers.

My daughter is like this. Always has been. I always like to read threads like this to try to better understand why (because I will try just about anything). She prefers to even have a different utensil for the different things on her plate (which cannot touch). Usually. Some of the things she actually likes surprise me because I cannot tell what rule they are following.

For her I think it is a smell and texture issue.

Quick answer before I dash off - I have a lot of food issues, but as I thought of texture: biting into apples sets my teeth on edge. I can eat them if I cut them up but they have to be a specific firmness. Mushrooms are another problem I have - particularly when they are cooked and get a bit slippery and rubbery.

There are LOTS of flavours, textures and smells that I can't stand:

Flavours:
-Eggs
-Fish (Except Halibut which I love!)
-Shellfish
-Lamb
-Veggies (the list I like is way smaller than the list I can't tolerate but I do love most salad veggies)
-Mango, Papaya and most non-citrus tropical fruits

Texture:
-Eggs
-Mushrooms
-Most Cakes (especially black forest, the wetness from the liquor mixed with the mushyness of cake makes me gag)
-Pears (I like the taste but most varieties I find "Gritty")

Smells:
-Mango
-Plantains
-Fish and Shellfish

Odd balls:
-Bananas I can eat but only if they are the perfect ripeness and temperature
-I love the taste and texture of most meat but I'm not fond of the texture of chicken but I can handle it in small portions.
-Some foods I like but need to be in a specific mood to eat like potatoes (regular and sweet potatoes). Mashed are ok but only is small quantities and while they are warm.
-I love raisins but not cooked into other food (my wife is a Filipina and they put raisins in meatloaf and stew type recipes, yuck!)
-I don't like the texture of cooked/stewed tomatoes except in store bought salsa

This is but a small sample of my food related pickiness I'm sure I am forgetting tons more.

Same here mang, I've always been an extremely picky eater and never been able to eat meat despite having no vegetarian convictions. I remember as a kid, everyone saying 'you'll grow out of it' - nope! I can eat meat once it's shredded (BBQ pulled-pork) reformed into slices (sandwich meat) or ground into burgers and chicken patties, but if it's close to its original form, forget it! Other things I hate: tomatoes, most vegetables, most potato dishes, most seafood, all Chinese food, all Thai food, etc. I'm an avid weightlifter too, so hitting proper caloric intake and protein consumption has turned into an obsessive nightmare even with supplement powder.

A friend of mine is like this. She was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but she most likely is on the autism spectrum as well as having a learning disability.

She doesn't like most vegetables, doesn't like coconut, blue cheese, tomato (unless it's tomato soup or ketchup), cucumber, shellfish, every fish except for tilapia, and lettuce.

When I was a kid, mushy textures like Lima beans and mashed potatoes bothered me, but now I have no problem with eating them.

I've never liked fruit or most vegetables, but it was the texture that was a problem, not the flavours. Now I find I can tolerate carrot & onion pureed and mixed into sauce, peas with mint if they're cooked quite firmly, and I eat a lot of tinned tomatoes & broccoli (I always liked those). But I'll never get anywhere near 5-a-day, I take vitamin pills and hope for the best.

It doesn't help that the traditional English way of cooking veg is to boil it to mush! I don't understand how anyone enjoys that!

And my hatred of potato in any form (I can detect potato starch from a room away in any processed foodstuff) certainly makes eating out tricky.

I'm dangerously picky, it's probably going to be the thing that ends up killing me. I can't stand almost all vegetables because the texture is gross, the flavour is gross and the smell is gross, and with some vegetables, like onions or peppers, the texture is such that it hurts my teeth in a way that's hard to explain. Pretty much the only vegetables I can stand are potatoes, parsnips, carrots (only when mixed with mashed potato to disguise the flavour) and occasionally broccoli -- still hate the taste but at least I can get it in my mouth without gagging. Fruit is much the same way; most fruits are too sour or slimy or the texture hurts my teeth -- the skin is the worst. I eat a lot of meat but only like the soft, flavourful stuff -- no lamb, no pork chops, no steak or ground beef unless it's mixed with something like tomato sauce, definitely no fish (though fish sticks are okay), the smell of cooked fish alone makes me gag. I pretty much live on bread, canned food, sweets and gummy vitamins. The temperature has to be just right too or I can't eat it, nothing straight out of the refrigerator without warming it up first, I even melt my ice cream. Yeah, it's bad. I really hate my sensory sensitivities that make doing normal stuff like eating so freaking hard.

I was a very very picky eater, and I still am a picky eater. But once I discovered how to overcome certain textures and flavours. It started getting better for me. For instance, something that would usually be served cold, if I heat it up, I can eat it. If I added more spices to the food, again tolerable. Mixing of food on the plate is usually a big no-no for me. I tend to enjoy them on their own without the mixing. People thought I was weird when I preferred them not mixing the food. I think it will become obvious when you start making your own food.

Anyone else eat sandwiches oddly? I eat the top slice of bread, then turn it over, eat the bottom slice, then the filling separately. Always have.

I am a very picky eater. After 20 years of refusing certain foods, my parents still aks me if I want them.

Going out is a nightmare. I can't stand the texture of most foods and am also wheat intolerant. If it's something like steak and chips (or a form of potato) that's ok.

Always been picky as have a high sensory issue to many foods. My mother said she had a extremely hard time finding baby food i would eat as i spit up nearly everything. Still can't eat anything with a strong flavor without a strong internal reaction. Plus mixed textures give a freakish reaction so i need to eat things separately.