Published on 12, July, 2020
I've had several food related discussions recently with a few autistic friends of mine, both on and off the forum and I can't help but be intrigued by how autism affects our taste in food. I have a couple of friends who are very hypersensitive to a lot of different tastes and textures and can only eat very bland tasting food of certain specific consistencies and yet there are other friends and also myself that seem to like lots of strong tastes; spices, etc. Food seems to be important to autistic people in one way or another! So I wondered where everyone else is with food. Do you prefer strong tastes and flavours or do you have a lot of food sensitivities that limit what you can eat? I'd like to know other people's opinions and thoughts on this?
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Hi, Thank you for replying. It must be difficult finding a lot of foods that are dry and crispy? It's interesting that you mention not liking bits in things as I do remember that as a child I would refuse to eat mashed potato if there were still lumps in it! Oh and I refused to eat honey for years when I was a child as there had been a lump in the honey that I had eaten and I was convinced that it was a bee and thought there were bees actually in the honey! Don't know if I should be disclosing that in public!!
What flavours are you sensitive too? It must make eating out or at friends very tricky if you react so much to strong flavours?
I'm going to have to read up on this hyper/hypo sensitivity to food as I'm interested in how it all works.
Have you had the allergy testing done to identify what exactly is causing the problem? That must be difficult having lots of food intolerances. I never used to have any food intolerances but I seem to have recently developed a mild intolerance to aniseed which is odd as I used to eat lots of aniseed balls when I was a child, but intolerances can develop at any age.
I guess at least you are able to eat something, something is better than nothing.