How do you feel about eating with your hands?

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I eat with my fingers unless impractical to do so.

Reminds me of this Seinfeld scene of eating a Snickers bar with utensils: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxB-H6f3crY

I don't eat everything with my fingers, only food that most people eat with their fingers.

I don't really like eating with my hands because then my hands get oily or sticky.

When I was a kid I used to eat everything possible with utensils. Even pizza and burgers, Id cut them up and eat them with a fork. Even wings because I don't like getting anything on my hands.

For those who like to seperate stuff and/or eat with their hands... why?

My daughter does this, she is nearly 5. She is going to be evaluated in a few weeks. She pathologically pulls her food apart, eats the parts seperately and will eat everything possible without utensil. If I am sitting there staring at her and harping on her I can get her to not pull stuff apart (like a cheesburger, it can get messy) but if my attention wanders so does hers and then we have deconstructed cheeseburger. Same with the hands. She is really bad at using utensils when she eats stuff like yogurt and then there is yogurt everywhere and even with stuff like that she will revert to her hands and she seems to... revel in getting her hands all sticky and slimy. She will even dig in and eat ketchup with her hands. Any insight into that?

Mixed flavors are overwhelming to me. My cooking is very simple, and that's more or less what I grew up with, so that might be partly to blame, but I don't think so (since taste preferences supposedly change something like every 7 years, and I like many things now that I didn't when I was younger, like coffee) If I go out to eat, I am often disappointed with my selection because it just doesn't taste good to me, they put too many things in. (Such as a pasta dish I had not too long ago at an Italian restaurant; between the noodles, white sauce, sun dried tomatoes, spices, meat, etc, I just couldn't eat it. It was so overwhelming I got nauseous.)

As far as eating with the hands, I believe it's sensory stimulation for me; I like to put my fingers in my mouth to suck off the food residue. I also sometimes have trouble with coordination, and food tends not to stay put on a fork for me (although I do fabulously with chopsticks, and I enjoy using them, for some reason, to the point where I always carry 2 pair of stainless steel chopsticks with me)

I also cannot eat several different foods at once if they are on my plate. What I mean by that is if I have meat, potatoes and a veggie, I have to start with the veggie (cools fastest) then eat the meat (gets icky fastest) and then potatoes (delicious regardless of temp.) When I try to take a bite of one thing, then something else, it's much the same as eating mixed foods. This is, however, not an issue if it is finger food, or a sampler of some sort.

Does this make enough sense? If not, please feel free to ask for clarification!

Most of my sensory issues are tactile, so I am very particular about eating with my hands. If I get any grease or sauce or whatever on my fingers, I have to wipe it off between every bite. Part of that, though, is that stuff on my clumsy fingers tends to get on my face, and I hate having foodstuffs I can feel on my face.

When I worked as a special needs teacher's assistant, I knew a little boy with classical autism and significant delayed development who insisted on tearing or crushing up every meal he ate into one, big, mixed up salad of all-lunch. It worked out well enough, then, that he was also a food stealer. He would eat lunch at his own table, where he couldn't grab anybody else's food, which left whatever mess he made making lunch salad separate to be his responsibility.

Same. I will eat pizza with my hands; (I find a knife, fork and pizza don't really work ) but not much else.

YES THIS. She sticks her fingers into her mouth and sucks the food off. No matter what we cannot get her to stop. Is it super enjoyable? When you were little did you know you were doing it? Is it a compulsion, like you couldn't stop it for the winning lotto ticket? Is it a stim?

I have a very hard time with this particular behavior since I'm the total opposite I can't watch without gagging and I'm sensing I just need to leave her alone and let her do it but this insight will really help me to drop it.

Super-enjoyable to the point where I actually get a rush out of it? No. I enjoy it, but if I couldn't do it because it was inappropriate for the situation, I wouldn't. HOWEVER if you can't get her to stop, for her it MAY give a rush. everyone is different. (If her language skills are decent, try asking her why she prefers eating with her fingers? I wish my mom had asked me about all sorts of things I did, even though I may not have been able to properly or completely explain.)

I would suggest what my mother did to help me break the habit; Tell her she can pick one reasonably messy meal each day to eat with her hands, and offer her un-mixed, easy-to-fork (hehe) foods for the other meals (like steamed baby carrots, mashed potatoes, etc.) as it is entirely possible that she has difficulty with utensils (I still do) and some foods are just *TOO* hard (I still eat corn and peas with my fingers cuz those buggers never stay on the fork, and it's frustrating)

You are assuming she eats vegetables. Haha. She refuses. She is VERY picky. A burger is the closest I can get her to meat and then she'll only take a few bites of the patty and eats everything around it (in stages). She hates chewing from what I can tell. When she was a baby/toddler she was on formula/baby food or similar until she was 18 months or so. She would just spit out most solids despite the mouthful of teeth. She couldn't even really get anything onto a spoon at all until she was probably about 3-3.5.

Even bananas are not immune. Gove her a banana and she stick her finger into it, squish it, etc...

I have asked her and I have gotten a variety of answers ranging from, "the fork/spoon is too hard to use" to "it tastes better" or the ever popular "because I just want to".

Is it possible that part of it is the taste of her natural body salts making things "better?"

Haha, that's true, I did assume.

Though her response that it's too hard isn't terribly surprising to me; I feel the same way.

I also prefer squishy foods. Crunchy stuff hurts my mouth, and I absolutely hate tough food, like anything beyond rare meat, or slightly stale bread. Tactile stimulation with food is really important to everyone, not just people on the spectrum, I think we just tend to have stranger or more specific requirements (most people won't eat a smushy apple because it "feels gross", and don't like stale chips because the sensation changes.) I believe tactile stimulation does change the way you perceive the taste of something, as I have "preferred" ways of eating things, like cheese; I don't like cheese unless I can eat very very tiny quantities at a time, and take ages to do so.

Perhaps, like me, she would be more inclined to eat meats like broken-up fried ground beef, rather then a whole burger, as it requires less chewing. (none at all, should she so choose) I absolutely love picking at fried ground beef when I'm making spaghetti or something. ^_^

It is entirely possible that she is further seasoning the food. 4/5 year olds tend to be quite seasoned and marinated themselves by dinner time.




She loves pickles and will eat them but tuckers out after 2 small ones. I'm betting if I gave her the slices she would eat more (I won't though, the salt content from two is probably a lot for a child her age) She likes some types of beans, but yeah picks them up and eats them one at a time. She will eat some chicken nuggets but likes the more processed ones. She thinks the ones at chick-fil-a (that are actually chunks of meat) are disgusting and hard to eat (I love them). The ones that come frozen in a bag and are heated up in an oven are her favorite and yes, those are the mushiest aren't they. I will try the crumbled ground beef because yeah, she will totally eat sloppy joes. Loves them. But I don't make them because that gets REALLY messy. But maybe I can make them without the sloppy. Melt some cheese on it. Hmmmm...

Wow this has been really insightful.

I don't like the sensation of greasy or otherwise dirty hands, so I eat almost everything with fork and knife or chopsticks (they are great for popcorns while typing) or toothpicks. Exceptions are impractical foods like sushi or "whole" fruit (takes me a long time and even more mess to chop). Every time I take a bite of something and my fingers are not completely clean and dry, I have to wipe them with a napkin (or my pants, absent-mindedly).

Needless to say, as a kid people were always surprised of my perfect table manners

I'd like to know how it turns out ^_^

Never! That's disgusting beyond words. I don't care how much you sanitize your hands, they still have germs from everything you touch. For me, there's no reason why I can't eat chicken wings or other "finger food" with a fork.