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?
Interesting subject.
As a kid I was a really fussy eater and at one point apparently would only eat chocolate. As I've grown up my pallet seems to have evolved, for example couldn't stand the taste of chilli or garlic, I love it now. One thing that hasn't changed is my sensitivity to textures, I hate rice pudding the mix of lumpy and sloppy together is just wrong to me, I love the flavour of both coconut and almonds but cant stand the texture of either coconut or marzipan, processed peas or marrowfat peas make me gag because of the skin. Now excluding alll the above mentioned textures I can eat pretty much anything, except gerkins... I do seem to be a habitual eater though in that I will eat the same thing for breakfast or lunch for weeks without going off it.
Mmmm yes I just read your comment i too have habits. I'm on toast and marmalade again at the moment. That's my regular again. I dont particularly enjoy it so not sure why I have to have it
I wonder if its because we are such creatures of habit/routine so tebd to stick to what we are used to?
well you've got to be sure that you've got enough gravy, right?
I put gravy on my gravy. Just to make sure!
Anything is mushy if you add enough gravy!!
We used to eat certain meals on set days when I was a child. But as I've mentioned elsewhere in the post, I like to keep two meals the same every day and then experiment with the 3rd. In reality I tend to go through phases, I'm just moving into a tagine phase at the moment so my 3rd meal of the day will be a tagine of some description most days for the next couple of months until I find something else that interests me!
It really isn't! I usually have an idea in my head of what I will order before I go out to eat.