Either way, I have ARFID and I can relate. It used to embarrass me a lot so I'd just skip meals and get different food on the way home, but now I just embrace it 🤷
This is a completely psychotic thought, but I'm really curious to see what kind of circumstances would break their pickiness. For example, how many days of starvation before they change their minds. Also, would that happen sooner if no one was observing them?
Absolutely unethical and it could never happen as an experiment, but I wish I could see the results somehow.
Someone very close to me suffers from ARFID. Imagine if you will that you were in the situations above. How long would it be before you tried eating dog poop? If people were telling you dog poop was safe and healthy and the only way to survive yet for your entire life you've known otherwise.
This isn't the greatest example, but that roughly gives you an idea of what someone with ARFID might be struggling with in those moments and why it is different than just picky eating.
A friend of a friend got into coma once because of that, their parents apparently didn't thought that it's psychotic to starve their children to death as an experiment and a teaching moment
Remember that guy who took a bunch of babies and had them raised without any affection and minimal contact to see what the original human language was? Maybe we can get him to do it
Generally, how hungry I am has little bearing on what I can or cannot force myself to eat. In my experience, it feels that it's more of an anxiety response to certain foods than it is a "ew that tastes bad" thing.
As a result, not only does being hungry not change anything, but if I've skipped enough meals, I'll also feel weak and have less ability to mentally self-regulate, and so it gets worse making it even harder to eat (or more accurately, shrinking my circle of foods I know I'll be able to eat)
On the flip side, two things that do help me venture out of my safe foods a bit are
recent exercise
being drunk
Exercise helps like everything in the brain, and being drunk lowers my inhibitions. Either way, the anxiety is more manageable, the nausea doesn't come in as strongly, and it's a lot more likely I can be adventurous.
Fuckin a if this isn't spot on. Knew a few people with ARFID. Exact same list of foods. One had a slightly more expanded list to include tv dinners. One was a kid who wouldn't eat any kind of fruit or vegetables. Not even coated with candy dip or chocolate.
I don't know if it's true or not but heard that this is kind of a form of autism.
As somebody who’s medically diagnosed with Aspergers, I can personally confirm that this was my diet more or less growing up; I basically subsisted on Spaghetti-Os, oatmeal, Oreos, pizza, chicken nuggets, and chocolate-flavored Ensures when I was growing up.
Nowadays though, I eat a lot more variety - I still have some aversion to trying out new foods from time to time, but I’ve learned to be able to prepare myself mentally to try out new foods and drinks. So when people actually act like in OP’s post and they don’t have autism or something, I can’t help but just roll my eyes because somebody with a social and learning disorder is able to do better than them.
That's a pretty impressive feat and I really applaud your efforts to try to break out of that. I feel for those with that diagnosis that this would be pretty difficult to overcome, especially unassisted and without professional help. I do also think that for others without a diagnosis it might be akin to a phobia that's developed. I myself grew up with A LOT of food hang-ups - went a full decade without being able to eat anything remotely resembling a dairy product. So these things take time and a lot of forward AND backwards steps.
I have ARFID, but I don't have Autism. My understanding is that Autism can cause a lot of ARFID-like symptoms—maybe even increase the likelihood of having it too—but ARFID itself can exist independently of Autism.
I think there is a certain group of people that ruin it. EG: "yeah, I'll have the burger, but no bun because if you put the bun near my burger, like within 6ft of my burger, I will die slowly and painfully." Ok, so we should take off the sauce that is thickened with flour, right? "No, the sauce is fine. Also can I get the hef with that?"
I witnessed something like this once at a deli - lady is griping that the soups aren't gluten free, but then goes right into deciding what rolls she wants... Meanwhile my stepmom has Celiac's disease, and occasionally catches attitude from servers when she tries to figure out how serious they are about their gluten free options...
The amount of people who are actually unable to have gluten seriously dwarfs the amount of people who claim it, unfortunately for those who really have it.
I'm a picky eater, or whatever the correct semantics for it are. I don't enjoy it.
Figuring out what to eat every day is a giant pain, let alone even attempting to eat healthy. It bothers me that other people seem to think it's some kind of selfish malicious plan. Forcing myself to eat something I don't like makes me gag.
I have ARFID, and at least in my case, my diet isn't as restrictive as most stereotypes portray, even though my list of safe foods hasn't really expanded since I was in middle school. I was raised vegetarian, and have never eaten meat in my life AFAIK, and I that think helped me to have broader, or at least healthier tastes than many with my disorder.
I of course have some stereotypical safe foods, like fries, pizza (on which the only topping I will tolerate is pineapple) and mac & cheese, but that list also includes things like sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and tofu stir fry.
The list of foods that I will not eat also has some things you may not expect, like most juices, sodas, and energy drinks, anything cherry flavored, and chocolate, which I will only eat if it's mixed with something like caramel or peanut butter.
There are some genuine benefits to ARFID as well in my case. The smell of red meat makes me nauseous, which has ensured I've stayed vegetarian into my adult life. it's also prevented me from getting hooked on caffeine or alcohol, as I can't stand the taste of coffee, tea or any alcoholic beverage.
My biggest barrier to eating healthy is actually executive dysfunction, rather than ARFID. The healthy foods I like all take some active prep work, whereas I can grab a box of cheese-its or throw tater tots in the oven with almost no effort.
I have this and let me tell you, it definitely isn't just picky eating.
I get intense anxiety, comparable to exposure to a phobia source, any time certain foods go near my mouth or if I even think about eating them. Every day I try to eat new foods because it's hurting my health, and while I'm making slow progress, most of the time I'll try to eat it and immediately start gagging and get debilitating nausea.
From what I understand, when most people say they "don't like" a food, they just mean they don't particularly enjoy the taste, but they're perfectly capable of eating it if they choose to. I, on the other hand, could have a gun to my head with the only way out being to eat a single spoonful of peanut butter, and even if I could force the spoon into my mouth, I would puke the moment I taste it...and I actually LIKE the flavor of peanut butter
I understand that it's difficult to empathize with situations unfamiliar to you, but please try. ARFID is 110% a real disorder, and people suffer from it. The least you can do is not make their lives worse just because they're different.