Sensory Eating is not Picky Eating

Author: Quincy
Date: June 10, 2019

I want you to imagine that you are a kid once again, maybe ten or eleven years old. You are sitting down in the evening with your family for dinner. The table is set, and your parents bring out what will be tonight’s entree: a cut of cold, raw chicken breast. It’s slimy pink mass slides onto the plate in front of you, and soon after your whole family is chowing down on the raw cuts of meat. You can’t stand to even watch anyone else eat the raw chicken, let alone fathom yourself choking it down. Yet, despite the very real disgust and aversion you feel towards the raw chicken breast, somehow it’s you who are strange for not wanting to eat it. Maybe you’re called “picky” or told that you simply need to and just learn to enjoy raw chicken like everyone else. Maybe you go hungry every night at dinner because the only thing being served are items as aversive as the cuts of raw chicken.

A slab of raw chicken sounds completely viscerally repulsive, doesn’t it? It’s not something that you simply “don’t like,” it’s something that you would actually have a physical negative reaction if you were ever try to eat it. I’m using this analogy to demonstrate what it’s like for a lot of autistic people who have sensory aversions to many common foods.

I’m not alone in the autism world…

From: Speaking of Autism. Read more here: https://speakingofautismcom.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/sensory-eating-is-not-picky-eating/