Peculiarly picky eaters?

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I do not consider myself to be a particularly picky eater, except when it comes to chicken wings! I cannot stand them, and I absolutely refuse to eat them! They're repulsive.
My mom finds this aversion to be very strange, however, because I love eating chicken legs, breasts, and thighs. I'll eat them with no problem at all! It's just the wings that make me want to vomit.

Does anyone else have any strange quirks about thier eating preferences?

My mom thought it was weird that I loved tomatoes but hated ketchup(now I like it) but they taste totally different!! ! I also can't eat anything with a "vomit texture"...like apple-sauce, most custerds, cottage cheese,etc. Sometimes I would say..."this smells like chemicals"...nobody new what I was tlaking about but it is a bitter smell or metalic and is yucky. No one new about AS when I was a kid so my family just thought I was weird or trying to get attention Kind of annoying having people decide that your "senses" are not "real" just because they have different ones...isn't that called "Lacking Theory of Mind???"

This has gotten me into trouble time and time again!

OMG don't get me started.

When I was an infant and first being given solid foods, it started. My mother couldn't put mashed potatoes in my mouth without it coming right back up.

Creamed corn is something you couldn't pay me to put anywhere near my mouth, but corn is one of my favourite foods.

I'm lucky in that my mom always taught me that if I didn't like it today, to try it again another day, because people's tastes change as they grow. I eat a lot of things today that I wouldn't have touched as a child, but don't give me mashed potatoes or creamed corn.

What is interesting to me though, is that I discovered that I have an allergy to deadly nightshade which actually covers quite a lot of things, some of which I eat, all of which give me a tingly burning sensation in my mouth.

I don't like to eat organ meats, from any animal. I love chicken, but am not crazy about legs; interestingly enough, my favourite part of any bird is the wing.

I hate bananas unless they are exactly perfectly ripe; not ripe enough and they're disgusting, too ripe and they're gross.

I don't eat apples unless they are organic.

I don't like green peppers, but love red and yellow peppers.

I hate things like leeks, citrus fruit (except lemons and limes), purple lettuces, rutebagas, parsnips.

I hate it when bartenders put fruit in my rum and cokes or when they don't put enough worcestershire sauce in my bloody caesars.

I love eggs, unless they're cooked easy over, which disgusts me.

I love steak as long as it's blue or very rare. Medium rare is too well cooked for me.

Oddly enough, I've yet to meet a fish or seafood that I don't like.

Hahaha! I also have a long, long list of picky eating issues...

I don't like the taste of any meat or poultry, although when I was younger I was able to tolerate veal.

I don't like tomatoes or any products made from tomatoes, like tomato sauce and ketchup. There was a period of time when I was able to eat pizza, even though it had sauce. Then I got sick of sauce again. Now I can only eat pizza with the smallest bit of sauce and there can't be any pieces of tomato in it or tomato seeds.

I also don't like any other sauces (except cheese sauces), salad dressings, mayonnaise (I can't even stand smelling mayo; I have to leave the room if I can smell it), mustard, spices (except salt), etc. Even doritos are too strong a taste.

Like Pepperfire, I dislike citrus fruits. All other fruits are fine! (Except tomatoes, like I mentioned before...)

I also don't like most flavoured drinks or milk but I do like chocolate milk. Surprisingly, I like diet coke even though sometimes the fizz is bothersome. I try to drink water more often than anything else. (Although some brands of bottled water are gross and taste like plastic. Does anyone else taste plastic in drinks/foods? My mom thinks I'm crazy).

Basically, I live off a diet of cheese, yogurt (but not the fruit at the bottom kind, ew ), carbs, non-citrus fruit, peanut butter, and shrimp!

I loathe peas. I also hate raw tomatoes. I'll eat them cooked or in sauces, but never raw. I hate bananas. I love citrus fruits. I hate cooked or canned peaches, but I will eat them when they're fresh. I hate most types of dried fruit, including raisins, dates, prunes, dried apricots, dried figs, etc. I like broccoli, but hate cauliflower. I don't eat any sort of seafood except for fish. I refuse to eat anything with an exoskeleton, or anything you have to scrape out of a seashell. I will eat cream cheese in non-sweet foods, but I dislike it in desserts. I also don't eat organ tissue. All meats must be fully cooked. I hate rare meat. I'd rather eat it burnt than rare.

I remember when I was in college, buying many a bag of trail mix, and carefully picking out and disposing of every raisin in the bag. Even today, when I eat Chinese food, I pick all the peas out of my fried rice. Whenever I attend any sort of potluck dinner, If I'm not sure what's in some food or other, I ask about it. If the person who cooked it is unwilling to tell me what's in it, I won't even try it.

I can usually find something I'm willing to eat in almost any restaurant, but I'm notorious for questioning the server about ingredients, or getting them to hold stuff or make substitutions, or sending things back. I tend to tip really well though, to make up for the annoyance.

At one point you must have tried something new and discovered you liked it.

What made u try that different food in the first place?

As a mom of a 10 yo aspie with a VERY limited self restricted diet, I feel like I am constantly nagging him to try something new, although I never force him.

Suggestions? Tips?

Thanks!

Peas. They mush in my mouth and make me want to puke.

My dad once forced me to eat some squash. I knew I didn't like it, it smelled AWFUL, and when he finally made me eat a bite of one I puked all over him. I was maybe 4. Still can't eat it, and it still smells awful. The smell of pickles used to make me puke, too, but my wife LOVES pickles, so I've gradually developed a tolerance for them. Still don't like them, but at least I don't gag whenever I smell pickles.

Hate dried fruit, even dried versions of fruit I do like.

Raw tomatoes, bad, every other form of tomato product I can eat buckets of.

Most dark green veges taste like they've been soaked in a bath of pennies. That's dark lettuces, spinach, broccoli, and the like. Most greens I don't like, I describe as tasting bitter or metallic. My wife has no idea what I'm talking about, and she accepts that I just taste things that she doesn't. I love green beans, though, as well as carrots. Iceberg lettuce has the metallic taste, but it's so light that I can drown it out with dressing (ranch or italian, please).

Another thing I don't like is fruit pie. They smell divine. I WISH I liked fruit pies. But the texture is strange and the intensity of the fruit's taste brought out by the cooking is just too strong. It's like sensory overload for my tongue. It's just too much. I know it's good, but I just can't eat it. Cream pies, meringues, and all forms of cake are fine.

Raw citrus fruit has the same effect on me as fruit pie. I love orange juice but I can't eat an orange. Grapefruit and everything to do with them is nasty.

I love about ten times as much pepper in my food as everyone around me.

When I was little I couldn't stand for my food to be be touching. If my green beans (which I like) leaked "juice" into my mashed potatoes (which I like) I'd have to eat around the part that mixed, because just looking at it and thinking about eating it made me feel sick. I've gotten a little better about that, though, and can now eat beans and rice mixed.

Also, when I was little I loved shrimp. I don't care much for it now. My mom told me when I was little I didn't like potato chips, and I can't even imagine that now.

When I do taste something I don't like, my face muscles lose all control and I make a face. A set of muscles under my cheeks tense up, pulling my mouth upwards and forcing me to squint. If you've ever seen a baby eat a lemon wedge then you know the face I'm talking about. I've tried for years to bring that under control, but people can still instantly tell when I don't like something because I'm incapable of hiding the fact. It's almost like a spasm. Trying to keep my face smooth just makes me look like I'm constipated.

amazingashleigh the thing that worked with me was a star chart.
Every time I tried something new or ate a hot meal I got a gold star for my chart, then when I got to a certain amount I was allowed to choose a present.
I think I was about 5 give or take a year or so, and I was and still am horrendously fussy, and of course as soon as I got my Barbie horse I stopped eating again but my parents loved it while it lasted.

I'm a picky eater.

I like trying out new foods, but most of the time, I don't like them. I don't like too much and I personally want to have a wider range of available foods. Thus I try new ones. Even though they're most likely gross. More of an intellectual realisation.

I only eat certain things and these again are from certain brands. One type of salami from one brand, one type of milk from one brand... fun. If my mother can't get the food, I just won't eat anything of the type.

I can eat other things/brands, but it's quite problematic to get them down in the first place.


If we're talking about food that doesn't stay down...

that's hot/real teat for me. (I love ice tea!)

I drank tea - barely any juice - as a baby but never again after that. Imagine the surprise my mother felt when she gave me hot tea when I was extremely sick in elementary school. I shallowed and... my stomach didn't agree with the shallow-bit at all.

Seriously, hot/real tea must be one of the very few things that don't work for me.

I'm always getting made fun of for not eating wings, cleverkitten! Just the thought of them disgusts me. And PLEASE don't make me watch people eat them either. *shiver* Anytime people want appetizers at a restaurant or something, I'm always first to chime in with something other than wings. LOL

I'm not too fussy, I'll eat most things... but it has to be organic. I won't touch anything non-organic.

I also hate bananas, but they're fine in a smoothie.

I'm not overly fond of meat.

I can't stand anything from a pig - bacon, pork, anything at all. Yick.

I also don't eat anything processed and with chemicals in it. No no no no no.

Oh yeah-

I hate peas! When I eat them they burst in my mouth and it's disgusting! Whenever I do eat them, I must swallow them whole. But I try to avoid them as much as I can.

The very smell of peanut butter makes me nauseous. I used to eat it all the time when I was a child, but I quickly became tired of it because, for a period of time, my father would feed me nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, every single day, every single meal. UGH! I can't eat ANYTHING with peanut butter or peanuts in it now.

I hate, hate, hate cheesecake. Cake and cheese just do not mix.

I do not eat mayonnaise on sandwiches. I will wipe it off immediately whenever I am served a sandwich with mayo on it. But I don't mind if it's in a tuna salad or something like that, as long as I can't taste it.

No bologne. It tastes wierd. Period.

I do not eat strawberries while I'm on my period. They remind me of.... stuff.

I love corn-on-the-cob, but I will not eat kernel-corn, or creamed corn.

I have little tolerance for canned fruits. I like them fresh or frozen.

I throw away my food as soon as a fly lands on it or flies close above it.

I don't like to eat my food after someone other than myself has touched it after I put it on my plate.

I actually love to mix my foods. I am always mixing different things together to see what interesting flavor combinations I can come up with.
(By the way, Fig Newtons sandwiched between Doritos chips taste wonderful! Especially when washed down with Root Beer. People look at me wierd when I eat them that way, though.)

It's not just plastic in water. I can taste it in soda. I can taste metals too. Fwiw, my favourite water is fresh spring water and if I have to buy it, it's Evian (which spelled backwards is "naive").





Me too! Although, I couldn't swallow them whole, that's a bit much.

Sonny, you would have cringed! Last night we had dinner out. I ordered the fish and chips... but they were out of fish... So I had to have the wings.

Gabbaruchi, you can have ALL of my green beans! And if you like pepper, try to find yourself some fresh serrano chillies, they taste just like green beans...only peppery.



Don't feed him. Leave him go hungry as long as you can before introducing the new food. Then, if he really doesn't like it, you'll know it right off, but he'll be so hungry he'll try anything. (I don't recommend trying this if he has conditions where missing a meal will make him ill though).

The last thing you should do though, is leave him sit at the table until he finishes. It terrorized me to be sitting at a plate full of mashed potatoes that I knew just weren't going to stay down if I could manage to swallow them and my baby sitter refused to let me away from the table until I ate them. And don't give them back to him at the next meal. If he didn't want them for supper, he sure as heck isn't going to want them for breakfast... beyond that... maybe let him pick things he'd like to try at the grocery store... I'm an adventurer and I'll try anything more than once, as long as it's done differently...

I grew up despising cabbage. Every time I was served cabbage, it was mushy and stinky and tasted horrible. Then, about a year ago, my husband (lovely gourmet chef that he is) served me steamed cabbage and it was fresh and crispy and sweet and I absolutely LOVED it! Sometimes I eat things that I don't like but that don't make me ill, like beans, but only in small quantities hiding in salads, but they have to be cut in half before going into the salad so they don't explode like peas. Get your son into the food and you might discover that the is curious about what he can find that he can eat. Good luck with that, I truly empathize. I drove my mother nuts. I think part of the trick is to find a way to get the vitamins and nutrition that he needs so he doesn't end up on a diet of Kraft Dinner and Peanut Butter, which is all I ate through college.

I used to be a very picky eater, i couldn't eat things like tomatoes, meat with anything in it that doesnt look like meat (fat bones etc), and everything i couldn't identify.
But when my mom made me cook my own dinner (i was about 14) because she had to work a lot and i had all the time in the world i learned to eat a lot of things, mainly because i saw myself what went in there and put it in there myself so i knew it was ok.
And the starving thing never worked for me, my parents and teachers at schooltrips tried and i did try to eat but every bite went out twice as fast as it went in

I'm a really picky eater, too. Don't really like chicken wings either. I don't get what makes them so popular

More recently I've been complaining about food tasting like "chemicals" also. Particularly fast food - it's gotten to the point that certain fast food places just make me nauseous.

As for tasting chemicals in water, well, some bottled water brands are just basically municipal tap water run though some kind of cheap filter (some soda brands aren't any better) so it's no surprise they taste like chemical. Getting bottled spring water mostly avoids this problem but can sometimes be expensive. You're best to shop around for a bottled water that tastes ok.

As for expanding a picky eater's diet, focus on plain unmixed ingredients instead of whole meals. Having a "nasty" combination of two otherwise-ok things is almost as bad as having something you don't like plain.

Also it depends on the current diet. If it's otherwise healthy (and just that it's restricted) then it's probably best to leave it at gentle nudging and suggestions of new stuff. If it's deficient in something important (fruit/veggies, lean protein, etc) then it's time to break out the experimenting until you find that one fruit/veggie/meat that works well for him. Having him help out in the kitchen couldn't hurt also.

People sometimes just have different biological tastes. For example, my uncle and cousins (his kids) absolutely can't stand the sight, smell, or taste of brussels sprouts, whereas I (the pickiest eater of them all) love them. I can't help but feel that the difference is partially biological/genetic/etc, it's not just personal taste.