ALL the food things

Ways autistic traits impact my daily life #4

I am one of the pickiest eaters you will ever meet.

Quick upfront sidenote, I don’t like the word “picky.” When you google it, you get results like “difficult to please” and “fastidious” (meaning “excessively particular, demanding, or critical”), plus hundreds of images of small children scowling at vegetables. Perfectly describes me (not).

I just don’t like a lot of foods, okay?

But pb&j’s are my jam.

I love cereal.

Smoothies and variations of applesauce are how I eat 70% of my fruit.

Potatoes are fun, you can eat potatoes lots of different ways. Same with eggs.

Autism often includes hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity (aka, under-sensitivity) to different senses. I am generally hypersensitive to most things, though not to the point of, say, mild abrasive textures burning like fire. Mild abrasive textures are just abrasive.

With hypersensitivity in mind, food’s got lots of issues for me. Like…

Texture. Stringy apricots…blech. Chunky avocado? Shudder. Slimy ring of fat in some ham? afjiagklha;ioah

If something is super crunchy, I will avoid it, because I don’t enjoy the sound of smashing boulders in my mouth drowning out my thoughts.

The smell of a few things makes me gag. Like orange chicken. It’s got an almost metallic tang to it, or sorta like dirty rubber shoes. I also strongly dislike the smell of cooked broccoli.

Extremely hot or cold things shoot pain through my teeth upon contact and send goosebumps clear down my arms (though maybe my teeth are just thin-enameled or something, I don’t know).

This one’s not technically related to senses, but whenever I see a steak, or some ribs, or some rare meat, all I can think about is blood and vampires and more blood and those little pig’s rib bones look uncomfortably close to how I imagine my rib bones look.

But hey, I like branching out with strange food combinations. Sour cream and banana smoothies. Yogurt with peanut butter. Ice cream in hot cocoa. Rice on tacos. Applesauce in pancakes. Quesadillas with boiled potatoes. I also love lemons and will eat slices until my mouth stings.

I think I’m hyposensitive to sour tastes and salty foods, actually. Like a week ago, I ate a straight pile of sea salt, like as big as a pinky finger, and the taste was alright. Just sorta salty. Then it burned my cheeks and I decided not to do it again, but that wasn’t due to the taste of the salt…

Whenever I go out to a restaurant, I totally order off the kids menu. I’ll have a cheeseburger, with only cheese and ketchup, please. Or when I go somewhere fancier, I will eat exclusively breadsticks, or cheese curds, or hope they have a breakfast menu and I can get waffles.

Thank goodness for waffles.

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