Why do NT adults eat different food?

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When I go to a cafe or a pub where you can eat food, I find two menus and the children's menu tends to have on it food I like and the adult menu tends to have a few things I like then mostly stuff I don't and have never tried before.

Why do NT adults do this?

I assume it's for NT adults. I certainly don't want a whole load of new stuff. I like what I like - always have done always will do.

On TV as well, they have two meals not cos the kids are annoying but with different foods as well. On Corrie, Shona ate 'the kids' fish fingers'. Like adults never eat fish fingers.

It's not even like the adult stuff is less healthy - quite the opposite in fact. I could understand if it was all about getting kids to eat healthier then indulging yourself.

I think it's about kids usually being pickier and more unwilling to try new things, so places that have separate children's menus tend to have a few basic foods that most kids like (here they tend to be meatballs, sausages, fish fingers or chicken nuggets with potatoes on the side in one form or the other.) This will only help picky kids to be picky though; I think a better system would be to have the same menu for kids too, but with every food coming with an option to have a portion that's a suitable size for a small child. This way adults could also get stuff that's usually on the children's menu without wondering if it's appropriate or not.

Are you talking about the NT customers or the NTs running the restaurants?


I'm not sure what you mean, but there's a variety of food on the menu because not every customer wants the same thing. It doesn't mean that customers are expected to have something new every time they go to the restaurant.


Yes, adults eat fish fingers, but few adults would bother going out to a restaurant to get fish fingers. Usually people want something special when they go out to eat, something that's not easy to make at home and something they don't normally have at home.

Like the other poster said, there are kid's menus because kids are pickier eaters than adults; kids often won't eat meals with complex or foreign flavors. So kid's menus have foods that are relatively common and bland, stuff most kids will be comfortable eating.

A couple of reasons.

One is experience-flattening; experiencing something makes experiencing the same thing again, particularly in comparatively rapid succession or multiple times, less complex and powerful in terms of sensation (see also Olfactory Fatigue, Sensory Adaptation, and Semantic Satiation). Seeking new and more powerful sensations can be a strong driver for the neurotypical - it's evolutionarily useful for adapting to new opportunities and environments, and has advantages like providing a wider rage of nutrients (when applied to food) and experiences (useful for intelligence and wisdom).

With autism, this automatic gating of sensation doesn't always seem to trigger automatically, or to the same degree, so new sensations can be overwhelmingly powerful, while repetitive and predictable sensations and experiences don't always lose their level of experienced stimulus. This can be comforting, both neurologically and psychologically, particularly in an overwhelming world. Thus, samefoods.

Interestingly, samefoods don't always have to be bland (although the stereotype of chicken tenders does have a certain basis in that, as do certain mega-chain fast food items). Even a very spicy taste, or unusual combination of tastes, can be a samefood, as it taps the "predictable/safe" dopamine button while avoiding anxiety and potential stress.

Similar patterns seem to arise with clothing material (somatosensory adaptation), environmental sounds (auditory adaptation) and bright lights and patterns (visual adaptation).

NT customers - I assume they cater to them as they're the majority of customers.

I don't want new foods that aren't basically a little step away from my old stuff ever. I hate being forced into it and avoid restaurants which don't have 'boring'/traditional foods on the adult menu. Hence why I tend to go to cafes, fast food places and pubs rather than anywhere fancy - also you don't have to dress up or obey etiquette beyond just being polite.

I also can't eat things with complex flavours without feeling sick and it tasting bad.

Dial1194 explained it well for me as to why.

The stereotypical food eg chicken nuggets (not one of mine) and pizza (one of mine) are unhealthy. But not all 'my' foods are unhealthy. For eg, a lot of fruit is 'my' food or meat with potatoes and vegetables. In fact, most NT adults drink, I don't, I don't even have most pops, I stick to fruit juice.

Dial1194 made a lot of sense with the stress thing too. Because for eg last year, I was trying out new things like quesadillas (tastes like a wrap, first had wrap as a teenager so it's ok to experiment a little), chilli fries (combination of flavours I like) or new types of chocolate or cereal etc. In a local cafe that caters to everyone's needs individually (lovely woman who really cares about her craft), she and me came up with a balsamic vinegar and chicken panini I'd never eaten before and it became one of my 'go tos'. This year, it has to all be old food and I'm craving things from before I started secondary that I haven't had in decades! All about comfort cos of the stress of this year.

One of my criticisms is that parents should make it so they focus on healthy plain basics in childhood. Then when the kid's older esp if they're NT, they might want to try unhealthy food like they try unhealthy drinks. But it won't be the norm. And if the kid's autistic, when they grow up they'll stick eating healthy stuff for the reasons Dial1194 said.

As a dyspraxic person, I wouldn't feel that way about fish fingers and chips. (Easy to cook etc). But I do feel it about pot noodles. There's a cafe near my granddad's that charges £2 for a pot noodle. I think that's cheeky. But people pay it. Pot noodles cost 50p from my local shop and are really easy to make.

That only works if the parents only eat healthy foods too when they're in front of the children. If the children see their parents eating different food, they might want to try too, and be confused if they're told they can't because it's unhealthy. Why would the adults get to eat them but children can't? Most kids wouldn't understand that. And older kids would call out on the hypocrisy.



It's just a necessarity. Cafes and restaurants have to pay for stuff like rent, electricity, salaries etc. but they have less items to get the necessary money from than grocery stores, so they have to take higher prices from what they can.

It works with booze.

To be fair that's probably cos most booze tastes awful the first few times one (an NT) drinks it. For aspies, that can be a reason to never get into drinking (part of my reason for not drinking is I never developed a taste for it).

Parents know not to get drunk or over indulge in front of kids.
Kids know alcohol is an 'adult drink'. Until they're teenagers.

Another thing I don't understand on TV is why parents eat separately to kids. Now, this happened sometimes with us as an extended family (when my mum's cousins were kids so there'd be large numbers on both tables). But we'd just be put onto a separate table. We'd eat the exact same food. Adults bore children and children annoy adults, so that part makes sense but the cooking of different food and having two meal times doesn't make sense to me.

I'll admit I haven't noticed this, except in shows which have a school setting. About the only time I've experienced it in real life is when the parents will be eating later (or they want the kids fed earlier) for some specific reason - the parents have friends coming over later for a social meal, or they are going out to a restaurant (with the kids being babysat or old enough to look after themselves), or there's some other scheduling issue or social condition or situation which overrides the more common all-family meal.

In addition, in TV and movies (and all media, really), entertainment overrides reality. If it's more convenient for the plot or the production process to show something onscreen which is uncommon or unrealistic, that will tend to be what happens. Kid characters might be shown eating separately purely because it's easier to have the absolute minimum number of characters onscreen at once - there are fewer actors who can mess up a take, there are fewer actors for the camera operator to keep track of, there are fewer actors who need to be scheduled and organized and made up for the scene. Or, if it's an animated movie/show, there's less animation and voice work involved for that scene.

Basically, unless there's a good reason for additional characters to be in a scene if they don't actually contribute to the dialogue or world-building or moving the plot forward (or they need to be for continuity reasons), they generally won't be.

Real life doesn't run on the same principles; generally, it's more logistically convenient for everyone in a family to eat at the same time and in the same place, as it means the total time from beginning food preparation to clearing up the dishes (and washing them, in many cases) is minimized. From an NT perspective, it also allows for an increase in the time that everyone is together and within easy social relationship maintenance distance - in the majority of cases, this means that even if parents work and/or children go to school, there are regular times every day for this maintenance. The evening dinner slot somewhat more than the more time-sensitive breakfast, for these purposes, but even then a family breakfast time can be seen as an early-morning quick social 'boost'.

Tell that to my lil sis. Whenever our parents drank, not often mind you, she kept bugging them to let her taste it. I never did, but only because it smelled so bad. Had it smelled good, the "it's only for adults 'cause it's bad for kids" probably wouldn't have worked with me.

I haven't seen that. I understand eating at different times if the schedules are very different, but haven't seen parents and children eating at separate times for no reason, not in tv or otherwise. We had different foods sometimes for various reasons tough, such as:
- some of us were allergic to some things that others weren't
- sometimes there were leftovers from the day before, but not enough for everyone, so another type of food had to be prepared as well
- my sisters and I love eating chicken, but dad hates all types of poultry (childhood trauma, apparently. Thanks, grandma), so it was either two types of food or never any poultry for us.

We had our meals together even if they were different things although generally the same type of thing was eaten so for eg, to stick with the chicken examples, me and my stepdad would have chicken pie and potato with mum having the same potato with quiche (when she was vegetarian).

The only exception being fish. Some fish smells awful and is only really ok to impose that smell onto non-vegetarians, as they might get their chance later for some "revenge". So my stepdad would have to eat that at a separate time.

And cheese sandwiches since my stepdad eats those at midnight every night. Nobody else shares midnight feasts with him.

It might be that we're normal and TV is doing it in an unusual way. It really is one family, they go on about eating something fancy/you see them eating something fancy then the kids eat typical 'child friendly fare'.

Because not everybody wants to eat the same thing, obviously. I’m an adventurous eater and I don’t like bland boring food. Picky eaters get on my nerves so much. It’s hard to go out to eat with them ANYWHERE. I have a friend that’s a picky eater and I usually always turn down her requests to go out to eat because she always wants the same old boring crap and won’t try anything new.

^ How do you tell apart people who are simply picky and people who have serious sensory issues, though?

You do realise that autistic adults and adults with allergies who eat like this can't help it right?

Kids can't either but parents ought to encourage them to expand it as much as possible.

I doubt there are adults out there who are picky eaters, not sensory sensitivity ppl but actually choosing to be picky. Since it's so looked down on.

One exception to that is people who are 'gluten free' with no health conditions. Idk if it's still a thing but that was a trend a while back. I felt bad for people who genuinely needed gluten free stuff and were lumped in with that.

I often find kids menus are terrible but it depends on where you go. High end restaurants try and give some variety to a kids menu rather than the standard cheese pizza or fish fingers followed by one scoop of icecream.

My wife sometimes orders from the older 55 menu. I never do. We’re both over 55.

Actually at our local country club there's an over 55's menu and it's quite good! big ample servings....