ARFID stands for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. While ARFID is often given as a diagnosis to people with an extreme aversion to foods, often resulting in clear negative health consequences. The lower end of the spectrum of ARFID can have subtle consequences.

Why We Might Be Avoidant

There are a few common reasons why we might avoid foods. Some avoidances can be overcome with desensitisation and frequent exposure, some cannot. By identifying why you might be avoiding certain foods, you can identify more easily the foods that it is worth putting effort into acclimatising, and desensitising, and which foods to accept won’t be a part of your diet.

Sensory Nope

Sensory includes texture, taste, smell, temperature, disgust and the more ellusive “feel”. Any of these can shift a perfectly good food into the “nope” category and we reject it.

We evolved to ensure that foods we consumed were good for us. Food can be bad for a number of reasons, such as it not being food, good food has gone off, or something about the food is toxic to us. This makes sense – most of us don’t like the feel of sand in our food, the way that it grits in our teeth and grinds as we try to chew. Our instinctive response is to spit the food out, because it contains something bad. We may then be put off that entire portion of the dish to avoid that feeling of sand between our teeth.

Another example is certains tastes, such as bitter. We evolved to avoid bitter foods when we are young as most plants that are poisonous taste bitter food. Some people are more sensitive to bitter foods and we have a biological rejection of them even into adulthood.

If a safe food is too bitter, or unexpectedly bitter when it usually is sweet, we might reject it.

Some people, such as Autistic People, or Super Sensors, have a more extreme sensory taste and smell sensitivity perception that neurotypical people. This can mean that there are certain sensory experiences you have to certain foods that trigger the “nope” response. Often super tasters and super smellers will prefer what most people consider to be a bland diet.

Disgust

Behind every phobia is the basic human emotion of disgust. Disgust is an emotion that protects us from a specific subset of harm, disease. Consider the kinds of moist, smelly, slimy objects that could make us quite sick – it would be hard for our ancestors to survive that without modern hospitals. The ancestors that learned to avoid foods that looked like this are the ones who survived to have decedents – you. While we initially learn some of what we should be disgusted with from our parents, that isn’t where the phobia comes from. We learn what to avoid from parents and other peers, the magnitude of the avoidance is generally biological.

Some of what drives ARFID avoidance is a feeling of disgust, or a phobia, relating to some foods. The more fatigued we are, measured in either low blood sugar or low neurotransmitters, then the stronger our brain will dial up the disgust of foods and the harder some foods become to eat.

Some disgust response become phobias which can affect our lives more than just avoiding a particular food because we think it is horrible.

Food phobias are irrational fear, disgust or anger emotional reactions to certain aspects of food. Sometimes a phobia can be triggered by a real life experience, but more often it is an inherited biological trait.

When phobias are hereditary, you will often find a first or second stage blood relative who also has a phobia. First stage is 1 link out, such as parents, child or sibling. A second stage is two links out, such as a cousins, aunt/uncle, grand parent or grand child. Their phobia may not be the same as what you are experiencing, nor even food related, but on average, the phobia is similar. This is a strong indicator that the phobia is neurological, and the thing it picked in this case is food related.

Once we have a phobia, we often construct stories around the phobia and then act out those stories. This can add foods to the phobic list, or make our methods for managing the phobic response ritualistic.

Here is a list of some particular named phobias. If the phobic reaction you have is not listed, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real phobia, it just may not be common enough to either be on the list or named.

Acerophobia- Fear of sourness
Alektorophobia- Fear of chicken
Alliumphobia- Fear of garlic
Bacillophobia- Fear of microbes
Bacteriophobia- Fear of bacteria
Botanophobia- Fear of plants
Carnophobia- Fear of meat
Cibophobia- Fear of food
Consecotaleophobia- Fear of chopsticks
Coprastasophobia- Fear of constipation
Defecaloesiphobia- Fear of painful bowels movements
Deipnophobia- Fear of dining or dinner conversations
Dipsophobia- Fear of drinking
Emetophoia- Fear of vomiting
Frigophobia- Fear of cold things
Geumophobia- Fear of taste
Hematophobia- Fear of blood
Hydrophobia- Fear of water
Hygrophobia- Fear of liquids
Ichthyophobia- Fear of fish
Iophobia- Fear of poison
Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables
Mageirocophobia- Fear of cooking
Methyphobia- Fear of alcohol
Mycophobia- Fear of mushrooms
Necrophobia- Fear of dead things
Obesophobia- Fear of gaining weight
Oenophobia- Fear of wine
Olfactophobia- Fear of smells
Ornithophobia- Fear of birds
Ostraconophobia- Fear of shellfish
Osmophobia- Fear of odors
Phagophobia- Fear of swallowing
Pnigophobia- Fear of choking
Rhypophobia- Fear of defecation
Sitophobia- Fear of eating
Teniophobia- Fear of tapeworms
Thermophobia- Fear of hot things
Toxophobia- Fear of being accidentally poisoned
Urophobia- Fear of urine or urinating
Verminophobia- Fear of germs
Xanthophobia- Fear of the color yellow
Xerophobia- Fear of dryness

Out of Spoons

Spoon Theory is the basic idea that doing things costs energy, and we simplify tracking that energy via discreet Spoons. Some tasks cost us more spoons than for average people, and so are considered expensive.

At the end of the day, after we have finished school, or come home from work, or struggled with being awake and conscious for 8 or so hours, we can be quite low on neurotransmitters; aka spoons.

First of all, you are waiting until you are out of sounds to choose what to make and out of neuro transmitter to solve how to make it. To fix that, make a choice and look up a recipe earlier in the day.

Second, make things easier, not harder. Yes, cutting up your own veggies is cheaper, but if they were precut, you may be more likely to use them. In this spirit, aim for quick and easy meals that are still mostly home made, tasty and nutritious.

Third, are you struggling with mild ARFID? The AuDHD version is fast, sugar, carbohydrate, protein and salt over most other foods. Fruit and vegetables are far less desirable, as they rarely prompt dopamine and are also inconsistent. This requires more speciality help.

Fourth, don’t push “nope” food into yourself. “Nope” foods are the odd food that your brain just says “nope” to.
Mine is creamed corn. I love every other kind of corn, but I can’t do creamed corn. *Shrug*

Lastly: reheats are love. If you can cook a decent lunch, cook extra and have that for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Dopamine Diet Chasing

When we were hunter gatherers, types of food that were hard and highly rewarding were things that can be broken down to glucose, various amines and salt. Salt was easy to get at the coast of the oceans, or in the middle of deserts, but hard to get everywhere else. Each of these has an important role to play in how we think and feel.

Summary:

The core Dopamine Chasing Foods are:

Fat
Carbohydrates
Sugars
Protein
Salt

None of these foods are inherently bad, when part of a balanced diet. Often, when diets are out of balance such as eating disorders, these foods become the primary ratio of food, and the foods that should be the in majority are too low. For more information on what a well balanced healthy diet looks like, check out Nutrition, Health in Body and Mind [LINK].

When we eat these foods, our brain releases some stored Dopamine and Endorphins Neurotransmitter to reinforce the behaviour (eating those foods). With the increase in glucose (from the food), Dopamine and Endorphins, we can think more clearly, push ourselves harder and stabilise our mood. This can benefit in thinking and feeling can lead to a complex reinforcing feedback loop that is at the core of many eating disorders.

For a full explanation of this, look at our section on Dopamine.

Managing ARFID

It is important to know why you (or the person you are helping) is avoidant. Once we know this, we can start to take some actions for it.