- Joined
- Jun 13, 2016
I used to work with kids, we had a 2nd grader who had ARFID related to what seemed to be an extreme fear of choking on food/not being able to swallow. He’d only eat a few kinds of puréed soups and mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower. Eventually he’d only eat broth and had to get a NG tube for a while and do some sort of OT program for eating. His two siblings were pretty adventurous eaters, normal parents. I felt bad for all of them. The weird part was I assumed he’d had some sort of traumatic choking thing happen that triggered it but apparently not.
Interesting. I’d actually wonder if he did have a traumatic event that just went unnoticed by his parents. Weird shit can happen to babies/toddlers while a back is turned or just not noticed because they don’t have the ability to do anything but cry. Real choking is silent, because the airway is blocked. He could have gotten choked on something, managed to clear it before anyone noticed and then just cried afterwards. No one even noticed it was due to a scary choking episode. Either that or there’s an issue with swallowing, stomach problems or painful chewing going on.
A kid insisting on a near liquid and purée diet of bland foods reads as something quite different from the parents in the UK claiming their ARFID kids would starve if Covid shut down the local fast food restaurants because their kids will only eat French fries and tendies.
In fact if the kids are significantly underweight I’d give any issue far more credence. The amount of supposed ARFID kids who are quite fat tends to point to indulging a difficult child addicted to empty calorie/high satiation foods and aversion to foods that don’t give them the endorphin hit that high starch/sugar/fat foods do. (It’s similar to morbidly obese adults who consume mostly fast food for every meal. They’ve actually destroyed their palette to the point that they aren’t much interested in eating anything that’s not a greasy salty fried abomination.)
Almost every post I read about ARFID the foods parents list as the foods the kids will eat is just a laundry list of empty calorie over-processed garbage. (Tendies, fries, Mac n cheese, chips all seems to be repeating themes as the “safe foods” of ARFID. French fries kill me the most. While they are certainly tasty they have almost no nutritional value so unless you are very underweight eating nothing is far better than eating French fries)
I’m sure ARFID does exist but giving kids that label when the problem is they are addicted/fixated on empty calorie highly processed foods is crazy. I’m sure the McDonald’s Corporation is thrilled that some parents believe children will starve without their French fries though.
Almost every post I read about ARFID the foods parents list as the foods the kids will eat is just a laundry list of empty calorie over-processed garbage. (Tendies, fries, Mac n cheese, chips all seems to be repeating themes as the “safe foods” of ARFID. French fries kill me the most. While they are certainly tasty they have almost no nutritional value so unless you are very underweight eating nothing is far better than eating French fries)
I’m sure ARFID does exist but giving kids that label when the problem is they are addicted/fixated on empty calorie highly processed foods is crazy. I’m sure the McDonald’s Corporation is thrilled that some parents believe children will starve without their French fries though.