Autism and Food – A Difficult Relationship

I was always viewed as a fussy eater as a young child. Both at home and at school, I drove people mad with my preferences and the volume of foods which I just refused to eat.

Schools tried different approaches to this but were generally unsympathetic. I remember having to take my plate to teachers eating on a stage at the end of the dining hall to ask permission every time I wanted to leave something uneaten. Given that there was no choice in what we were served, this happened a lot, and I was admonished for my near daily requests.  

At other times at school, I was simply forced to eat things that I found absolutely repulsive. On at least a couple of occasions I responded by vomiting at the table as I tried, in tears, to force down food that revolted me.

My late life autism diagnosis has led me to reevaluate much of what happened to me in the past, and my issues with food now make a lot more sense. Two of my biggest dislikes, which largely remain to this day, are cheese and pasta. I can already feel the horror from almost the entire world as I share this!

But what is interesting is that I now can eat, and enjoy, cheese and pasta in certain forms. I eat melted cheese, on pizzas and burgers for example, on a regular basis. I enjoy lasagne, which generally combines both cheese and pasta. So what is going on here?

The key for me, I think, is not the taste of the food but the texture. While I will never love a strong-tasting cheese, it is the texture of a hard piece that I really dislike. Similarly, it is the texture of “lumps” of pasta that seem to be the problem for me. In a lasagne, the pasta is thin and mixed with lots of other tasty things. It is a world away, to me, from a plate of twists or tubes with a mere hint of sauce.

As an adult, this now all makes perfect sense, and of course I am in much more control of what I choose to eat. But autistic children who are already struggling with a world that makes little sense to them will naturally find it hard to explain why they dislike certain foods so much.

To this day I would find it hard to explain why I dislike brussels sprouts, beyond saying that they taste horrible. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could find that taste pleasant, unless of course they taste very differently to others than they do to me. For children still learning to communicate, expressing their experience of food must be almost impossible at times, other than what they like and dislike.

The science of taste is complex and evolving. What some of us oldies were taught at school about different areas of the tongue being used for different types of taste turns out to be untrue. The old generalisation that tastes were sweet, sour, salty, and bitter is also losing traction – you cannot watch a cookery show without umami being mentioned regularly.

But do not underestimate the impact of texture, or the issue of hypersensitivity in taste for neurodivergent people. We are all different in every way, so why would we expect our food likes and dislikes to be the same.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I do hope that children with string reactions to certain foods are now treated more sympathetically than I was. Of course a balanced diet is important, but so is eating at all!

I am a parent. I know what it feels like to cook several different meals at the same time. But I also know what it feels like to be force fed what is, to you, the worst food imaginable. A little more tolerance and understanding can go a long way.