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.
I don't suppose you would be able to thin cut fruit and vegetables and roast them so that they were dry and crispy, would that work? Mind you some of the nutritional value would get lost by that process.
The only two things that I have ever tried to eat that I won't eat are corned beef and liver, I physically cannot swallow liver no matter how long I chew it for, it just won't go down! Although weirdly, I really like liver pate!
I was quite 'fussy' as a child but since reaching adulthood my taste in food has broadened a lot. Although I have a weird habit where I have to take one mouthful of each thing on my plate in turn, so if I'm eating a roast, I'd go around the plate in a continuous circle, taking one mouthful at a time of each different food, never two mouthfuls of the same food in a row. Maybe that's part of being largely hyposensitive to taste, I like to keep the taste in my mouth varied?
It's difficult when someone else interferes with how things 'should be' whether that's to do with food and cutlery or something else entirely!
I love ginger! I have ginger, lemon and manuka honey herbal tea, can't get enough of it! I like limes, oh and lemons, I absolutely love them, I could literally eat a whole bag of them one after another in one sitting! I like loads of garlic too! I like pretty much any strong spicy flavour. I have a bit of an addiction to sweet chilli sauce at the moment, I'm getting through at least a couple of bottles a week. But I do like spices for flavour rather than heat, I would struggle with a ridiculously hot curry. It's odd two people, both with ASD can have tastes at such extreme, opposite ends of the scale!
My two year old would be with you though, toast, biscuits, cereal bars, crisps, she's very hypersensitive to taste. If I give her something to eat that she's not sure of, she'll first sniff it, if it passes the sniff test then she'll touch it with the tip of her tongue, if it passes the taste test then she'll put in in her mouth, sometimes in comes out again but sometimes it gets eaten!
I don't think that I'd like to take dissolvable medication, I imagine that it's like gritty bad tasting water?
That's good that the lactose intolerance cleared up!
Yes, better to eat what you are able to eat rather than it becoming a chore :-)