In this week’s episode of The Autism Mums Podcast, we talk openly about what happens when eating stops feeling simple and starts feeling scary. We unpack ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) and explore how it differs from 'picky eating, sharing our real-life experiences.

Key Takeaways

• Identical packaging and familiar brands can build trust.
• Safe foods can be very limited, for some children under 10 items
• When anxiety spikes with transitions like back-to-school often shrink food choices.
• “They’ll eat if they’re hungry” advice can escalate fear and refusal.
• Texture, temperature, smell, colour and broken food can be deal-breakers.
• We've found reintroducing once-safe foods during calm periods and follow the child’s curiosity can sometimes be successful

Mentioned in This Episode

BEAT Eating Disorders

ARFID Awareness UK

National Autistic Society

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Transcript

Victoria Bennion:

Hello and welcome back to the Autism Moms podcast. Today we're talking about

something that many families quietly battle with every day. When eating stops

feeling simple and starts feeling scary. You'll hear us mention ARFID quite a

lot.

Natalie Tealdi: ARFID

is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, which is more commonly known as

ARFID. It's a condition characterized by , the person avoiding certain foods or

types of foods having restricted intake in terms of overall amount eaten or

both?

Any anyone of any age can have a i. It occurs in children,

teenagers, and adults. Although people with ARFID may lose weight or have low

weight, this is not a criteria for ARFID. It can occur at any weight and varies

in different people.

Victoria Bennion: If

you are wondering, is this just picky eating? We'll talk about a few signposts

that could indicate it may be more. We'll share our family's [00:01:00 ] experiences and the ways we found to

support our children. As always, we are here to share our own experiences in

the hope that they may be useful.

Not to diagnose. If anything you hear raises concerns, do speak

with your GP or a qualified clinician.

Natalie Tealdi: So

Victoria, I think you have the best knowledge out of both of us on this one. Do

you wanna talk a bit about your

experiences?

Victoria Bennion:

Yeah. I can talk about our experiences. So my son doesn't have a diagnosis of a

ARFID, but in his autism diagnosis, he's noted as having ARFID behaviors. This

was explained to me as the reason was there very strict criteria that a child

had to meet to actually get a diagnosis of ARFID.

That you can have behaviors and a lot of autistic children are

affected by a ARFID,

And so this is because. Many autistic people experience sensory

issues and sensory [00:02:00 ] overload, and

that then leads to a heightened sensitivity when it comes to eating, resulting

in the symptoms and behaviors of ARFID.

Natalie Tealdi: How

would you say, you know, if it's picky eating or if it's ARFID?

Victoria Bennion: I

can talk about that with my son. If you're looking at your child, and are

wondering if this is more than picky eating, so things to be aware of or are

they avoiding major food groups? I know my son certainly was. So fruit, meat,

vegetables are they reacting to the different temperatures?

Are they having sensitivity to the textures? Could they be

gagging, retching? Have they gone over that spell of, they're not toddlers

anymore. They may be plus six. That's something to consider. And if their diet

is limited, I believe it's to less than 10 foods. That's another indicator of

ARFID or a behaviors.

Perhaps not noticing that they're hungry. I know that's

something my son certainly struggles with, [00:03:00 ]

identifying that he's hungry or just missing meals entirely. Avoiding food at

social events or avoiding social events where there is food Parties were always

so difficult for us. We would never sit at the food table.

We would have to go well away from that. Thank you very much.

Struggling to stay at the table during meal times.

In terms of timeline. I think he was about one and a half what

he would eat really narrowed. But that's quite common for this sage group and

it's often called food neo phobia. And I took him to the doctor at the time,

and I was just told that he would outgrow it. It was picky

eating. It was very normal for this stage of development. I don't know. I went

with that at the time. I was a bit uneasy about it. The things that he was

eating were waffles and I think it was probably fish finger. I've got this

written down somewhere because we did take him to an occupational therapist at

the time because it was really concerning.

We didn't think [00:04:00 ] he

was eating enough. The only fruit he would eat was raspberries at that time.

And then interestingly, it had to be a specific number of raspberries. And he

clearly was very anxious around eating. It was real anxiety about eating foods.

So he just said the same thing over and over every day.

I think the GP said to me that around five, he would've

outgrown it. And it was before that we took him to the occupational therapist.

'cause she's the one that gave me quite an interesting assessment, which I

didn't realize at the time that she must have been thinking along the autism

lines.

'cause she observed a lot of other things in his behavior and

when I went back to that, when we were going through the diagnosis process

yeah, it was interesting to see what she picked up, like lining up the toys,

grouping them by order of color, things like that. But in terms of the food, so

she gave us some tips at that time and it was to try to get him to play with

food. Touch [00:05:00 ] food. So I remember we

used to do it, we used to get different bowls out of different textured foods,

and it was really me playing with it. He would touch it a bit, but the idea was

that eventually he would, get some under his hands and lick it. But he never

did.

He never did. So his diet really didn't expand from what it was

about one and a half. Still principally the same things he eats at 11.

There has been some expansion, but we've also lost some safe

foods, but it's not hugely different.

Natalie Tealdi: Okay.

And so when it came to the early stages of when it was all

changing and his foods were reducing, what sort of behaviors were you seeing

then? Was he getting upset

Victoria Bennion:

Really upset about the food and just fully refusing, but yet very upset with

the refusing. His speech was delayed so he didn't have any words to be able to

tell us. I dunno if you remember when we went to Florida, so he was almost two,

[00:06:00 ] this was when it was very noticeable

and I remember before we left being so worried about what he would eat over

there. And we went to the supermarket when we got there and bought Oreos. He

was eating Oreos, still eats Oreos, and he would eat chips and sometimes he

would eat chicken nuggets at that point. So that's mainly what he had the whole

time we were there. I do remember there was one day where he tried a cube of

watermelon,

Natalie Tealdi: Okay.

Victoria Bennion:

That was it.

And as I said, he didn't speak at that time, so he couldn't

communicate. Exactly what the problems were. I was thinking because he had some

food sensitivities that they seem to run in our family for dairy. So we had

trouble with dairy and I was wondering if it was anything related, it was maybe

food allergy line at that point, at about one and a half, but I think that was

just separate.

Natalie Tealdi: And

do you find the appearance of food makes a difference to him?

Victoria Bennion:

Yes, there's a [00:07:00 ] huge difference. So

there was, when he was in reception they were doing an activity with potatoes

and they were making it int