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?
I'm very sensitive when it comes to textures. I can't stand multiple highly-contrasting textures in the same dish (raw tomatoes are a personal pet-hate; flakey peel, crunchy flesh, slimy innards full of tiny hard seeds!) or slimy textures at all.
Flavour wise, I can't abide vinegar but I think that's more my smell hypersensitivity than anything. I adore very very hot (as in spicy) foods and mostly live on spicy, highly-flavoured curries/stews/etc.
A couple of people that have responded to this thread have mentioned having difficulties or preferences regarding certain textures of foods, personally I don't think that I'm bothered by different textures. Oddly, I'm not a huge fan of cooked tomatoes, although I can eat them and I'm fine with them incorporated as part of a dish such as spaghetti bolognese. What textures do you prefer?
I don't use vinegar either but it's got nothing to do with the taste, I actually like the taste of vinegar and will eat it with pickled onions or as salt and vinegar crisps. I just managed to make an association in my head when I was 6 between having eaten vinegar the night before and getting a sickness bug! Unfortunately, although I realise logically that the vinegar had nothing to do with it, I've never managed to unlearn/over-ride that association and still won't put vinegar on food!
Do you use spices in food more for heat than flavour then?
Oh and I'm quite lactose-intolerant, though I sometimes eat cheese anyway because it's cheese.
People drink vast amounts of alcohol all the time knowing they'll feel like death in the morning, so I figure "what's the difference"? XD Cheese hangover!