It’s shocking to me that so many women in their thirties and forties lived through ED and cutting in their youth but will not countenance the possibility that social contagion and mental health comorbidities could have anything to do with the gender issues in girls today.
Right, I wonder this often. I'm in this age group and cutting was *the* thing. Yet, there were zero kids saying they were trans. Don't they think it's strange that so many kids are now saying they identify that way...?
I have a lovely set of neighbours, kind people. They have a 16 year old daughter who is desperately thin, wears the biggest and baggiest clothes possible, tries to disappear into the background whenever you even say hi to her, and in the last year started identifying as non binary. Her parents very pointedly call her "they" whenever they can (which makes conversations extremely confusing if I'm watching the house for parties (as if she would!) when they're away). I feel so sorry for her as she just seems so unhappy.
I know that's only one anecdote but my couple of teacher friends have lots of similar stories.
Same same same as my small world. It drives me mad to be able to say nothing. But it is so obvious. They moms will see the picky food, eating, and recognize other signs but are perplexed it seems or enthusiastic about the gender or NB stuff.
Full agreement. I forced myself to accept gender nonsense for years, because I thought that's what I had to do to be a good person. Being gay, I felt doubly obligated to go along; after all, did I want to be a traitor to the community?
I now realize that I have no moral duty to accept untruths, but it was a long road getting there.
I deal with school age kids who are too unwell to attend school. It mostly used to be physical but increasingly is mental health. Every single girl in the past year on my caseload has been autistic with huge levels of anxiety and social phobia and all but one identified as a boy. Ages 12 to 14. It's really alarming. Many also self harm or have disordered eating. But they're just being their authentic selves, right.
The last time I brought up mental health comorbidities as a possible caution to someone on the left IRL, they were like "of course and all those mental health issues are caused by their GD and that is why they need help right away!". There seemed zero willingness to consider that perhaps the causation might be going the other way.
My relative was clinically depressed and also an alcoholic. Therapists told him he had to control his alcoholism before they treated his depression as alcoholism can cause depression. Why don’t activist even consider that treatment of other mental health issues should come before affirming care?
Alcoholism can cause depression, but also people drink to cope with mental health problems. If someone is drinking as a coping mechanism and you take that away without treating the other thing, they will either relapse or find another (often worse) coping mechanism. I think it's hard to determine in each case which problem came first or which one to treat first. And I think the same is true with gender dysphoria.
We see this all the time in the addiction world. People come in with a ton of psychiatric diagnoses but it turns out to be just (and this is a diagnosis in the DSM) "Substance-induced mood disorder". Or "substance-induced psychosis". Take away the substance and the problem goes away. But we also see the other side, where someone comes in with no history of mental health treatment at all and they break down crying immediately because of something they've been holding in for years.
Because activists want as many people to transition as possible. Because they aren't activists for human health and happiness, they're activists for transitioning.
As a sufferer of both those afflictions, those therapists sound horrible and cruel. It's not either or.
Certainly one affliction may limit the extent to which treatment for the other can be successful but we don't start giving diabetics medicine only when they get their diet under control.
There are a lot of people in eating disorder subreddits who also identify as trans/NB. Many of them claim that it is the root of their ED. It very well could just be their stress manifesting in two particularly fashionable ways.
I spent a year at a coed “therapeutic boarding school” in north GA—which ended up being shut down and having its assets seized and various other things because it turns out these people were not on the level; they were fleecing families and mistreating their children, but that’s a story for another day! Lol—and there were a lot of girls (maybe 30% of the girls there, or maybe even slightly more than that) who were there for EDs, cutting, or both. It was my first and still only firsthand, up-close experience of knowing people living through those things. And my God was it an awful, soul-crushing thing to witness. Those were some of the most deluded and broken people I’ve ever seen, and I have *seen some shit*. Most of them were very pretty, very sweet and good-natured, but they were convinced they were fat cows who wouldn’t/couldn’t ever be loved by anyone; they wouldn’t eat even when they were sat down with a plate of plain pasta or chicken soup or whatever and told not to leave the dining hall until they’d at least eaten SOME of it—and they still wouldn’t eat it (or they’d eat it and then immediately go throw it up).
Most—though sadly not all—of the women I knew back then are pretty ok now as far as I can tell, but man I bet they’ve got some fucking scars deep inside. Because frankly, *I* was left scarred just from witnessing it up-close for a whole year like that—some of these girls were friends of mine, after all, so yeah it was impossible not to get psychologically invested in them. I’m not trying to defend their denial about social contagion etc., but maybe I *am* trying to explain it: I think the wounds from that stuff are still pretty raw for some of the women I know, so I’d imagine coming out and “judging” other women for their modern social contagion stuff would cut awfully close to the bone; it’d be like judging their younger selves by proxy, almost, which I would imagine might bring those feelings back. And based on what I saw, one would NOT want those feelings coming back even for a millisecond.
I dunno, that’s my somewhat informed armchair diagnosis of that situation. But I’m a guy, so there’s only so much I can know about female psychology (which is to say: I can “know” what women are willing to tell me about their psychology). Anyway, I’m jabbering on too long now, but yeah, that’s my best guess on that. Curious if other people think I’m full of hot air on that.
This is why the gaslighting around the affirmation model was so important. The people involved in pushing youth gender medicine to the forefront understood that making trans an identity tied to gays and lesbians as well as making transition a necessary treatment to prevent suicide would be crucial.
Otherwise, many people would have made the obvious connections right off the bat.
I think it’s down to the changing social conditioning women and girls are put under. In the 90’s and 00’s eating disorders and cutting were framed as ‘bad’ because they were visibly unbeautiful in a space where the worst thing you could be was unbeautiful. They made you look ill, they made people sad and girls were never ever supposed to do that. Trans ideology is framed as the opposite- to mutilate yourself now means you’re Happy and Joyful, you’ve gone from being a problematic and depressed teen girl to a literal female eunuch. It’s been framed as a sure fire way to ‘cure’ yourself. All your scars are hidden, just smile in public and don’t break the spell
This is a bit of a side note but there was a dude in the mid to late 1990s who wrote a book about the increased incidence of childhood obesity and obesity in adults in the US. It was/is historically unprecedented.
He was doing the rounds promoting the book and he had at least two interview incidents where he responded, I'm not here to talk about anorexia, which impacts a very small percentage of the population, particularly compared to childhood obesity. He would ask why the media was so obsessed with anorexia.
Because ED/cutting weren't social contagion for them, they all just decided to do those things because that's who they really were and how they really felt, haven't you heard?
I didn’t cut or have an eating disorder either, but I knew girls who did. It’s hard to imagine that many women who came of age in the nineties and early 2ks didn’t know someone.
Huzzah, new episode! Watching that video of the mom in the show notes made me think. I recently visited a friend with a son who's about 12 and got to meet a bunch of his friends' parents etc. I was really surprised at how common the "picky eater"/"texture issues" complaint comes up. This could be biased/faulty memory, but I don't remember having any friends who were "picky eaters" and if my memory of youth is accurate, saying something like "I can't eat peanut butter I have textural and sensory issues" would have gotten you roundly mocked. It seems like the majority of parents I know have at least one "texture issues" kid.
Can't help but wonder how much of it is permissive/overly deferential parents who tell the kid that that's what they're experiencing when in fact little Jimmy just doesn't want to eat his spinach because it does not taste like candy. People can't have just spontaneously developed an aversion to perfectly edible food en masse in the past 20 years, right?
To add to what you said, it seems very odd that glamorizing this for the views made the child feel more comfortable. What is it teaching her? It's so odd that this "affirming" model is taking hold. The more this little girl listens to how she has this problem, the more it solidifies in her tiny head that she does. I understand it's probably tough but this is doing no favor to this child.
I think it’s relevant that she has an older sibling with autism (and food issues) who no doubt monopolizes much of the mother’s time and attention. The little girl’s food rejection may have originally been genuine or just mimicry of the sibling, but “now I’m special too and have so much of mommy’s attention” is a hard feedback loop to break.
I thought this the whole time watching the video. She’s glowing from the attention. This is common for kids, they want to be the centre of attention. Hadley’s comment about this really made me realise how important this is in anorexia
Kids also get these ideaes from each other. I had one that claimed "texture issues" at some point (middle school?) after an entire childhood of being a normal eater. I felt like kind of a jerk at the time, basically ignoring it because I'm harsh about people cultivating neuroses. I may have even rolled my eyes. At 21, she's a perfectly normal eater. I just don't get the draw. I mean, I hate the texture of bananas. Does it mean I have texture issues? I've never thought about it that way. I'd be embarrassed to say such a thing. I just don't eat bananas.
I have realized, after 57 years, that I’m actually a picky eater. I never thought about it before! I announced this to my mom, who laughed. “We’ve always known that!” She told me. She never told me, and I just didn’t eat stuff I didn’t want. More for everyone else!
Maybe it comes from being descended from Irish famine survivors, or living with my grandpa who went hungry during the depression, but complaining about the food put in front of you was a big no no. You’re grateful, you eat it, and you move on.
This was my family totally. Contrast with the way my stepsister was raised; she is 20 years younger. I remember we were driving to a steakhouse for my dad's birthday once and my stepmother announced that her kid needed to get White Castle because steakhouse no good for her; my dad managed to seethe with rage in a manner only detectable by his snappy retort "well there's a dumpster, why don't we just stop there." I don't remember if my stepsister ate anything that night, all I know is that we didn't go anywhere but the steakhouse.
Right, I don't like cherry/grape tomatoes..I guess it's a "texture issue" but I feel like that terminology elevates a matter of taste into some sort of disorder that must be accommodated.
I have found myself using the phrase "texture issues" more often in recent years to justify my dislike of bananas. As soon as I say those words, I feel like people are much more likely to think "OH, it's a real THING." Same with ARFID vs picky eater.
I'm just going to push back a little bit on that, Molly. Here in Denver we've had a huge influx of Venezuelan migrants, including little kids. The families have had to rely on food banks, which tend to carry wholesome but awful food, like canned green beans. Some subset of the little kids have wound up in the hospital because they just won't eat what's put in front of them, no matter how hungry they are. The food is so different, and so unpalatable, that they really don't eat.
But I'm mostly with you on otherwise healthy kids who are not undergoing the traumatic transition to a new country that doesn't have arepas but does have canned green beans.
Well, it's probably fair to surmise that having been dragged across seven countries and the Darien Gap and pulled away from everything that's familiar may have been traumatizing and may have contributed to their difficulties with food.
I have a friend who runs a food bank. Clients are recent immigrants from a variety of countries. My friend surveyed them to find out what they thought of the food and what they preferred. The overwhelming response was that don't eat canned food and preferred fresh. Unfortunately, canned food is what is donated and is of course non perishable. Anyway, my friend worked hard to get some semblance of what they wanted.
When did a staple like canned green beans become awful? A little olive oil, salt and pepper, with or without heating them, and you've got a tasty and nutritious side. I mean, if you boil them for more than a minute they start to taste bad but that's an issue with preparation.
It's also the abundance culture in the US. If you grew up in a culture where food was scarce or you had to grow it to eat or it was rationed, this just didn't happen. When I first moved to the US and people were saying, oh I hate mushrooms because of the texture, I was shocked, but then I understood it's a privilege culture thing.
As the parent to “picky eaters” I endorse this. We (as a community) give our kids so many snacks that they can afford to be picky. It makes me crazy. Then I’m made to feel crazy when my husband is like “they need a snack”
Well? They just had breakfast 2 hours ago and I want them to eat the nutritious lunch I have prepared so can you not give them the protein bar that happens to have a pile of sugar in it? And on school days, I send them a small snack and good lunch but school serves muffins for breakfast* and other kids give them cookies from their snacks so my kids don’t eat their lunch.
*in California, every child gets a free breakfast at school.
Yes, I could do things differently to make my kids less able to be picky, but I only have so much control over my children’s diets and it’s not the fight I’m willing to tackle most days.
This is actually part of the diagnostic process for this condition though. Lots of children with Autism who have it have to have feeding tubes and stuff. It can be incredibly intense. My little boy is really really restrictive in what he eats and for a year I just gave him what everyone else was having for dinner and didn’t make a fuss either way. The little fucker didn’t crack once and actually reduced his list of foods. We lost pasta due to me giving him some with too much going on. I discussed it with a friend who works with young people with eating disorders and she told me to just give him what he feels comfortable eating and his growth is back up on track. He is only little but listening to him talk about why he doesn’t like things is really interesting. The other day he asked me if the ham in the sandwich I was making him was noisy ham. Wasn’t sure how to answer that one!
Yes! There are absolutely kids who will starve themselves, the idea that you can just send the kid to bed without dinner one night and they’ll become perfect eaters is insane. Kids with legit mental conditions can have insanely high resistance and parents have to balance making sure the kid gets adequate nutrition (we always made sure to have either kasha or quinoa at every meal since we knew our kid would eat it).
The key with this anxiety stuff is that the kid needs to be firmly but compassionately pushed into trying new things. If every meal turns into a screaming match with their parents it’s only going to make things worse. The kid needs to be brought onboard with the program and to have good therapeutic help. It’s definitely true that there are parents who are way too accommodating of their kids anxiety but the armchair diagnosticians who declare “in my day we just spanked our picky eaters until they ate properly” drive me nuts.
My older son absolutely would starve himself- his food aversions were that strong. He lived on a very limited diet for many years. We figured out how to expand his diet over years but I just laugh when people say kids won’t let themselves starve. Most kids will not. Some definitely will.
A lot of parents threaten this, but from personal experience (as an exceptionally picky eater and undiagnosed autistic), they'll mostly crack if you really do just refuse to eat things you don't like, commit to it, and follow through. It's brinksmanship.
Yeah, I was very picky as a kid, and while I was sometimes made to eat things I didn't like, my parents mostly left me alone. My mother said I would just refuse to eat if she didn't let me have something I liked, so she decided not to worry about it too much. There were usually some leftovers in the fridge I could have if I didn't like what was served.
I hated things like deli cold cuts, wonder bread, hot dogs, and peanut butter and jelly, so basically all the standard kid lunch foods. My school lunches tended to look like a charcuterie plate— a little salami or summer sausage with brie or gouda, olives, and a piece of fruit.
Do you have a bad sense of smell? I have always preferred really strong flavors like that - stinky cheese, garlic, onions, don't care for overly sweet things like caramel - and as an adult I discovered that my sense of smell is sub-par. I assume the two are related.
My daughter is going through the diagnosis process now and she is very very "picky". Loves Red Leicester cheese but not cheddar. Will eat pasta with Bolognese but not consider any other sauce. She started eating burritos this year (but only if made with beef chili and rice) and it was a total breakthrough. She will eat raw carrots but not any fruit except raspberries and blueberries. Yet she loves olives of any kind but won't even consider broccoli or cauliflower. She used to eat curry but had it too often so it's off the menu now.
My daughter would only eat beans as long as she believed they were nuts. Once she found out, she never had one again (though she will still eat green beans). Infuriating.
This is really interesting, and makes me feel a bit jerk-ish for assuming my friend's son was just being dramatic and excessively picky. Is there any rhyme or reason to the choices?
This is a bit of a tangent, but my friend's kid is also really into abominable YouTube channels about fancy rich people that are basically just videos of 20 year olds getting into sports cars, eating at fancy restaurant, and buying expensive clothes and watches. I noticed that the kid seemed to like foods that were coded "fancy" like filet mignon, lobster, Thai food (which is definitely perceived as "cool"), etc., and the things he didn't like to eat all seemed declassé, poor-coded, or mainstream.
I'm probably overthinking this. But seriously watching 20 minutes of that kid's YouTube consumption made me fear for the future and be curious about all kinds of strange youth culture I know nothing about since I don't have kids yet.
I mean, being dramatic and excessively picky can certainly be part of it! But there are foods that will just make him throw up.
I really don't know what the connecting factor is. He loves tuna, salmon, octopus (Spanish ones from a tin), chicken nuggets (but only the ones from McDonalds), grilled cheese (how Dad makes it), fried shrimp (only from Culver's), PB&J, Doritos, and Cheetos. Won't eat pizza with cheese on it (again, has to be Dad's). Everything has an asterisk.
Do you think this has to do with the little bits of peanut residue that linger in the mouth after eating them? I like nuts (and peanuts) but I can imagine that the residue could be an issue.
It's not myopia-- it's that for us, the unpleasantness of eating (or in some cases smelling, touching or just being near) the food in question outweighs the unpleasantness of being hungry.
It's just utilitarianism with an unusual landscape of utility weights (which are, after all, completely arbitrary).
I would also like to push back on that. We all know that there actually are children who would starve themselves to death, children who need to be hospitalized and force fed because they have anorexia. If we can accept that children would starve themselves over body issues why would we refuse to believe that they can do it for other reasons?
Yeah exactly. People get super judgy when it comes to parents. I have two kids, one of them would literally throw up if given something that had the wrong texture until age 2 and yet is not at all a picky eater at age 5. The other ate everything we put in front of him until the age of 3 and then became incredibly difficult to feed. We keep trying different things and over the years we’ve significantly expanded his palate but this idea of “oh you just didn’t scream at your kid enough when he was little” is just not healthy.
The difference between “a picky eater” and an actual mental health condition is pretty huge. The older kid will literally track what you’ve touched and then scream at you to wash your hands if you touch one of the “bad” foods, similar to what you’d do if you saw someone touching raw chicken. That isn’t just being a picky eater, it’s basically a variant of OCD and the kid needs to be a willing participant in the treatment so having an antagonistic relationship with food and parents is not going to help.
FWIW I share the objections to this dumb social media account but I am 100% on board with this kids treatment, it sounds like the therapists know exactly what they’re doing.
Your last point is where I land and it disappointed me that Hadley (who I thought was a pretty good guest host overall) basically copped to thinking that the kid’s condition may have been a phase that the mom exacerbated or indulged despite the pretty detailed account Katie gave of what led to the diagnosis.
Would I be surprised to hear a B&R story where a mom turns her kid’s picky eating into social media fodder and lies about a rare diagnosis to lend the story mystique? Not at all. But that’s not what this seems to be and so there should be more benefit of the doubt to the parent, at least on the diagnosis/treatment front.
How did this work on you guys? I was/am very picky but we have 3 meals a day and I am not going to not like everything all three meals.... If I was so picky as to miss a meal, I can make it up in other places.
It worked fine on us as kids...I mean, we were never literally forced to eat anything we really didn't like for reasons of taste and were gagging over, but there were six of us in my immediate family and not a lot of money around, so food waste was a big no no. You absolutely had to eat your vegetables though, or no dessert. If you'd complained about texture I think mum would have laughed you out the room. We do all eat a lot of veg as adults!
I have the same thoughts. One of my brothers is “on the spectrum” and another had sensory issues as a kid in the 90s (tags cut out of shirts, sweatpants only, no Halloween costumes, etc.) However we grew up on food stamps so there was no picky eating allowed in our house. You ate what was on the plate—canned spinach, canned beets, generic govt meat crumbles, etc. I remember a few basic childhood disagreements about food but never these meltdowns and outright avoidance that ARFID parents describe.
One theory I have heard is that it could be due to early childhood allergies or intolerances or even foodborne illnesses putting kids off of certain foods at young ages. But again, what has changed since 1993 that is functionally preventing kids from eating?
Also, very noticeable that ARFID folks seem perfectly capable of eating, essentially, junk food.
One of the most amazing statements I heard was a parent claiming that their son was an "extreme supertaster" and therefore couldn't eat chocolate. But he loves extremely spicy Thai food. But eggs are a no-go.
I was just thinking "oh my god the dog has trained you"
I learned from her that Cheerios have that “almost something” taste for a reason. It creates something called “chasing flavor”, where you keep eating it, trying to intensify the flavor. You never get there, but you eat more than you would have if it had a strong taste.
I always think about that when I hear some of these stories - the people whose dog will only eat if they put the food in a certain dish, or at the table etc. not saying there aren’t kids with neurologic or mental health disorders who have genuine issues with food avoidance or rejection, but a lot of times it sounds like the way the issue is handled maybe reinforces instead of reducing it.
Being a supertaster is specifically about being extremely sensitive to bitter and sulphurous tastes. It doesn't really have anything to do with spice tolerance. So having issues with chocolate and eggs, but not with Thai food, actually seems pretty consistent.
I don't know if I'm a supertaster -- I love dark chocolate, so probably not a full one -- but eggs have always smelled like sulphur to me, even when fresh and no matter how well they're cooked. As an otherwise vegetable-loving kid, I hated cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) for the same reason. I'm otherwise an adventurous eater and have learned to enjoy those as an adult, but eggs still set off my gag reflex as if trying to make myself eat something rotten.
It's honestly a bit embarrassing -- brunch gets inconvenient -- and not something I like to draw attention to, but the aversive response is so intense and visceral that it's not something I've been able to train myself out of despite occasionally trying.
I think your idea about allergies or intolerances may be part of the explanation. Not all food allergies are life threatening or even severe. Food allergies have risen in the US since 2000 thanks to the biggest pediatrician's group in the US telling parents they should delay introduction of foods like peanuts until 18-24 months. Women were even told to avoid these foods while pregnant. The animal and epidemiological evidence showed the opposite at the time, so I'm not sure why they made that recommendation aside from lingering sympathy for Puritanism. Not being exposed to soil bacteria and parasites also probably raises the risk of food allergies (and autoimmune disorders) and that may have played a role now that kids are spending more time in structured activities and less in unstructured activities.
What I find a little off putting is that, typically, eating disorders at their root aren’t *about* food. Being a picky eater is dramatically different than anorexia, and I worry that people are inclined to conflate ARFID (which actually does seem to be food-driven) with other conditions that have deeper causes. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong though.
But think about the similarities: this child’s ARFID keeps the whole family focused on her. She obtains an illness identity, and everyone is dancing to her tune. That sounds precisely like an eating disorder.
Honestly, that doesn’t sound at all like my experience, though admittedly my experience is entirely subjective and based on unique and non-replicable circumstances. Personally as an anorexia patient I just wanted to be left alone, and that was a common thread among the women I was in inpatient and outpatient treatment with. But that was a long-ago era and different locale so again might not be representative.
I really remember going on a school camping trip and two of the children having a list of foods they ate including which type of crisps etc. and that was 30 years ago. I think we just have a name for it now and we are all just aware of the minutiae of each other lives because of social media. Of course that’s making it worse probably but I’m sure in 1993 parents were quietly buying safe foods for their children and not making a fuss about it. The autistic children I know who have this condition are both non verbal and their families are very offline. It’s just another thing they deal with.
Haven’t listened yet but I do think kids were always picky eaters. My own mom said I once said ‘I’ll eat it if you don’t make it again’. Kids have different taste bud receptors so don’t enjoy bitter tastes the way adults do. This is said to be why kids (generally) hate vegetables. I know I’ve also never liked the texture of raw tomatoes even tho I love the taste. Eating a tomato in a salad causes me to wretch. Whether that’s a gag reflex from some associative disorder (like the way the smell of oysters can make some people feel sick) or something else I don’t know.
I think now people are just prone to put labels on things whereas before it was ‘I don’t like it’.
I think your last sentence nails what bothers me about this - "I don't like it" is a me problem, "I have a texture issue" is a you problem that implies that you must provide me with something that does not agitate my serious texture based condition.
Mate, my ma was never providing me with anything other than the 10-12 recipes she knew. 😂 That woman had a full time job dealing with the very worst in society, her kids were getting what was on the plate and that was it.
Good point for my fave ‘it’s a you problem’ food story. University (london), going to Brussels for an EU institutions trip. All day travelling, arrive at this big city centre / conference hotel. About 80 students. Students had declared ‘regular diets / vegetarian / vegan’ (that was it - no nut allergy / halal / I don’t like corn options available. I’m sitting with a girl who is vegan. The waiters come out and serve the normal diet folk first - a slice of cold beef, a piece of lettuce and a slice of cheese. Shitty but the hotel is t going to care. Then they serve the vegetarians - they get the lettuce leaf and cheese. The vegan beside me gets the same, she starts complaining in bad French that she is vegan, can’t eat the cheese. The waiter looks at her, looks at the plate… just lifts off the cheese and walks away. Gal had a single slice of unseasoned lettuce for her dinner.
Yeah the idea that picky eating is some kind of new phenomenon is... bizarre. Nonsensical, really.
It's exactly the same phenomenon as people who want to gatekeep the definition of autism. "Back in my day, autism meant you were beating your head bloody daily! None of this social anxiety crap!" That kind of thing. The reason there are more people diagnosed now is that we're actually looking for it and have recognized that there's a spectrum of developmental issues here.
Your last sentence is the answer. Everyone has a few foods they don't like and texture is a very common reason not to like something. It's just that now we have this quasi-medical label for it that's permeated our culture. Same thing with diagnosing people as narcissists rather than just calling them self-involved assholes. Language has shifted towards describing everything in medical and therapy terms.
As a child I couldn't eat anything with a jelly texture or fat, especially on a meat, there was always fat on it. Or anything like a pulled pork texture, meat strings. And I am 45 and grew up in Soviet Union where they weren't all that permissive. My mom once managed to buy a crab I think and it was a huge deal, but I couldn't eat it. There was some screaming and crying, she was literally trying to push that crab meat into my mouth, didn't succeed though.
But I did get over it, eventually, so now I am a vegan and never ever tried any seafood other than fish, so all good lol
I have a very strong aversion to bananas, as does my sister. As in we will vomit if we eat it. When we were growing up in the '80's and '90's this was a bit extreme, but we were allowed to pass up bananas because it if the kid is vomiting it's not worth making them eat it. Aside from that, we were basically told that if we didn't like what was served, we didn't have to eat it but we weren't going to get anything else. Some of this may be that people are more comfortable talking about food aversion. I also wonder if some of it is that parents didn't get the helpful tips about getting kids to try new foods and overcome aversion.
The other thing that may be going on is a change in the types of stress. Right now a lot of kids whose early years were in the pandemic (in the West Coast we didn't go back to normal until early 2023) and it simply wasn't possible for the parents to protect their kids from all of the social dysfunction in that time. There also seems to be a trend toward talking to kids about threats that are existential or far away rather than immediate and that may be driving it.
It’s shocking to me that so many women in their thirties and forties lived through ED and cutting in their youth but will not countenance the possibility that social contagion and mental health comorbidities could have anything to do with the gender issues in girls today.
Right, I wonder this often. I'm in this age group and cutting was *the* thing. Yet, there were zero kids saying they were trans. Don't they think it's strange that so many kids are now saying they identify that way...?
I have a lovely set of neighbours, kind people. They have a 16 year old daughter who is desperately thin, wears the biggest and baggiest clothes possible, tries to disappear into the background whenever you even say hi to her, and in the last year started identifying as non binary. Her parents very pointedly call her "they" whenever they can (which makes conversations extremely confusing if I'm watching the house for parties (as if she would!) when they're away). I feel so sorry for her as she just seems so unhappy.
I know that's only one anecdote but my couple of teacher friends have lots of similar stories.
The kids who cut are also the trans kids now.
Same same same as my small world. It drives me mad to be able to say nothing. But it is so obvious. They moms will see the picky food, eating, and recognize other signs but are perplexed it seems or enthusiastic about the gender or NB stuff.
But, you see, the rise in trans identification is 100% explained by greater societal acceptance, so we need not even ask about the sudden surge.
Amazing how quickly people can slot that answer in and stop thinking.
But they wont “be kind” anymore if they admit it.
Full agreement. I forced myself to accept gender nonsense for years, because I thought that's what I had to do to be a good person. Being gay, I felt doubly obligated to go along; after all, did I want to be a traitor to the community?
I now realize that I have no moral duty to accept untruths, but it was a long road getting there.
I deal with school age kids who are too unwell to attend school. It mostly used to be physical but increasingly is mental health. Every single girl in the past year on my caseload has been autistic with huge levels of anxiety and social phobia and all but one identified as a boy. Ages 12 to 14. It's really alarming. Many also self harm or have disordered eating. But they're just being their authentic selves, right.
The last time I brought up mental health comorbidities as a possible caution to someone on the left IRL, they were like "of course and all those mental health issues are caused by their GD and that is why they need help right away!". There seemed zero willingness to consider that perhaps the causation might be going the other way.
My relative was clinically depressed and also an alcoholic. Therapists told him he had to control his alcoholism before they treated his depression as alcoholism can cause depression. Why don’t activist even consider that treatment of other mental health issues should come before affirming care?
Alcoholism can cause depression, but also people drink to cope with mental health problems. If someone is drinking as a coping mechanism and you take that away without treating the other thing, they will either relapse or find another (often worse) coping mechanism. I think it's hard to determine in each case which problem came first or which one to treat first. And I think the same is true with gender dysphoria.
We see this all the time in the addiction world. People come in with a ton of psychiatric diagnoses but it turns out to be just (and this is a diagnosis in the DSM) "Substance-induced mood disorder". Or "substance-induced psychosis". Take away the substance and the problem goes away. But we also see the other side, where someone comes in with no history of mental health treatment at all and they break down crying immediately because of something they've been holding in for years.
Because activists want as many people to transition as possible. Because they aren't activists for human health and happiness, they're activists for transitioning.
As a sufferer of both those afflictions, those therapists sound horrible and cruel. It's not either or.
Certainly one affliction may limit the extent to which treatment for the other can be successful but we don't start giving diabetics medicine only when they get their diet under control.
There are a lot of people in eating disorder subreddits who also identify as trans/NB. Many of them claim that it is the root of their ED. It very well could just be their stress manifesting in two particularly fashionable ways.
I spent a year at a coed “therapeutic boarding school” in north GA—which ended up being shut down and having its assets seized and various other things because it turns out these people were not on the level; they were fleecing families and mistreating their children, but that’s a story for another day! Lol—and there were a lot of girls (maybe 30% of the girls there, or maybe even slightly more than that) who were there for EDs, cutting, or both. It was my first and still only firsthand, up-close experience of knowing people living through those things. And my God was it an awful, soul-crushing thing to witness. Those were some of the most deluded and broken people I’ve ever seen, and I have *seen some shit*. Most of them were very pretty, very sweet and good-natured, but they were convinced they were fat cows who wouldn’t/couldn’t ever be loved by anyone; they wouldn’t eat even when they were sat down with a plate of plain pasta or chicken soup or whatever and told not to leave the dining hall until they’d at least eaten SOME of it—and they still wouldn’t eat it (or they’d eat it and then immediately go throw it up).
Most—though sadly not all—of the women I knew back then are pretty ok now as far as I can tell, but man I bet they’ve got some fucking scars deep inside. Because frankly, *I* was left scarred just from witnessing it up-close for a whole year like that—some of these girls were friends of mine, after all, so yeah it was impossible not to get psychologically invested in them. I’m not trying to defend their denial about social contagion etc., but maybe I *am* trying to explain it: I think the wounds from that stuff are still pretty raw for some of the women I know, so I’d imagine coming out and “judging” other women for their modern social contagion stuff would cut awfully close to the bone; it’d be like judging their younger selves by proxy, almost, which I would imagine might bring those feelings back. And based on what I saw, one would NOT want those feelings coming back even for a millisecond.
I dunno, that’s my somewhat informed armchair diagnosis of that situation. But I’m a guy, so there’s only so much I can know about female psychology (which is to say: I can “know” what women are willing to tell me about their psychology). Anyway, I’m jabbering on too long now, but yeah, that’s my best guess on that. Curious if other people think I’m full of hot air on that.
This is why the gaslighting around the affirmation model was so important. The people involved in pushing youth gender medicine to the forefront understood that making trans an identity tied to gays and lesbians as well as making transition a necessary treatment to prevent suicide would be crucial.
Otherwise, many people would have made the obvious connections right off the bat.
I think it’s down to the changing social conditioning women and girls are put under. In the 90’s and 00’s eating disorders and cutting were framed as ‘bad’ because they were visibly unbeautiful in a space where the worst thing you could be was unbeautiful. They made you look ill, they made people sad and girls were never ever supposed to do that. Trans ideology is framed as the opposite- to mutilate yourself now means you’re Happy and Joyful, you’ve gone from being a problematic and depressed teen girl to a literal female eunuch. It’s been framed as a sure fire way to ‘cure’ yourself. All your scars are hidden, just smile in public and don’t break the spell
This is a bit of a side note but there was a dude in the mid to late 1990s who wrote a book about the increased incidence of childhood obesity and obesity in adults in the US. It was/is historically unprecedented.
He was doing the rounds promoting the book and he had at least two interview incidents where he responded, I'm not here to talk about anorexia, which impacts a very small percentage of the population, particularly compared to childhood obesity. He would ask why the media was so obsessed with anorexia.
Because ED/cutting weren't social contagion for them, they all just decided to do those things because that's who they really were and how they really felt, haven't you heard?
I didn’t cut or have an eating disorder either, but I knew girls who did. It’s hard to imagine that many women who came of age in the nineties and early 2ks didn’t know someone.
Hearing a child say "like and subscribe" is so creepy and dystopian.
Meh. To me, that’s just like school shootings. Too many to care!
The phrase "8-year-old eating disorder influencer" makes me hope that a large asteroid is headed straight for our planet
We’ve had long enough. It’s been a good run.
I feel like we jumped the shark a few years ago.
I just read that Bennifer might be back ON again? Somebody pull the plug!
They need to just make up their fucking minds! C'mon, guys!
Someone should give the Trisolarans our location. (Excuse the nerdy reference).
Huzzah, new episode! Watching that video of the mom in the show notes made me think. I recently visited a friend with a son who's about 12 and got to meet a bunch of his friends' parents etc. I was really surprised at how common the "picky eater"/"texture issues" complaint comes up. This could be biased/faulty memory, but I don't remember having any friends who were "picky eaters" and if my memory of youth is accurate, saying something like "I can't eat peanut butter I have textural and sensory issues" would have gotten you roundly mocked. It seems like the majority of parents I know have at least one "texture issues" kid.
Can't help but wonder how much of it is permissive/overly deferential parents who tell the kid that that's what they're experiencing when in fact little Jimmy just doesn't want to eat his spinach because it does not taste like candy. People can't have just spontaneously developed an aversion to perfectly edible food en masse in the past 20 years, right?
To add to what you said, it seems very odd that glamorizing this for the views made the child feel more comfortable. What is it teaching her? It's so odd that this "affirming" model is taking hold. The more this little girl listens to how she has this problem, the more it solidifies in her tiny head that she does. I understand it's probably tough but this is doing no favor to this child.
I think it’s relevant that she has an older sibling with autism (and food issues) who no doubt monopolizes much of the mother’s time and attention. The little girl’s food rejection may have originally been genuine or just mimicry of the sibling, but “now I’m special too and have so much of mommy’s attention” is a hard feedback loop to break.
I thought this the whole time watching the video. She’s glowing from the attention. This is common for kids, they want to be the centre of attention. Hadley’s comment about this really made me realise how important this is in anorexia
Kids also get these ideaes from each other. I had one that claimed "texture issues" at some point (middle school?) after an entire childhood of being a normal eater. I felt like kind of a jerk at the time, basically ignoring it because I'm harsh about people cultivating neuroses. I may have even rolled my eyes. At 21, she's a perfectly normal eater. I just don't get the draw. I mean, I hate the texture of bananas. Does it mean I have texture issues? I've never thought about it that way. I'd be embarrassed to say such a thing. I just don't eat bananas.
It’s so funny that you put it this way.
I have realized, after 57 years, that I’m actually a picky eater. I never thought about it before! I announced this to my mom, who laughed. “We’ve always known that!” She told me. She never told me, and I just didn’t eat stuff I didn’t want. More for everyone else!
Maybe it comes from being descended from Irish famine survivors, or living with my grandpa who went hungry during the depression, but complaining about the food put in front of you was a big no no. You’re grateful, you eat it, and you move on.
This was my family totally. Contrast with the way my stepsister was raised; she is 20 years younger. I remember we were driving to a steakhouse for my dad's birthday once and my stepmother announced that her kid needed to get White Castle because steakhouse no good for her; my dad managed to seethe with rage in a manner only detectable by his snappy retort "well there's a dumpster, why don't we just stop there." I don't remember if my stepsister ate anything that night, all I know is that we didn't go anywhere but the steakhouse.
Right, I don't like cherry/grape tomatoes..I guess it's a "texture issue" but I feel like that terminology elevates a matter of taste into some sort of disorder that must be accommodated.
I have found myself using the phrase "texture issues" more often in recent years to justify my dislike of bananas. As soon as I say those words, I feel like people are much more likely to think "OH, it's a real THING." Same with ARFID vs picky eater.
Yes. If you didn’t like what was for dinner you just didn’t eat. No one is going to starve themselves to death.
I'm just going to push back a little bit on that, Molly. Here in Denver we've had a huge influx of Venezuelan migrants, including little kids. The families have had to rely on food banks, which tend to carry wholesome but awful food, like canned green beans. Some subset of the little kids have wound up in the hospital because they just won't eat what's put in front of them, no matter how hungry they are. The food is so different, and so unpalatable, that they really don't eat.
But I'm mostly with you on otherwise healthy kids who are not undergoing the traumatic transition to a new country that doesn't have arepas but does have canned green beans.
This anecdote does not pass the smell test. I can't believe that that's happening without some kind of variable not mentioned here.
I found it credible purely because I sympathize entirely with little Venezuelan kids who dislike canned green beans. Canned green beans are awful.
I absolutely love canned green beans. But I don't believe any truly, genuinely starving-to-death child would not eat them.
I'm a granola crunchy gardener/pickler-type, but there's something about canned green beans that are just delicious. I don't know why.
The way to solve the problem: smother them in butter. It's how my dad got us to eat our veggies when we were kids, haha.
Well, it's probably fair to surmise that having been dragged across seven countries and the Darien Gap and pulled away from everything that's familiar may have been traumatizing and may have contributed to their difficulties with food.
That is exactly the kind variable I meant. There's a bit more to it than "green beans so white."
I have a friend who runs a food bank. Clients are recent immigrants from a variety of countries. My friend surveyed them to find out what they thought of the food and what they preferred. The overwhelming response was that don't eat canned food and preferred fresh. Unfortunately, canned food is what is donated and is of course non perishable. Anyway, my friend worked hard to get some semblance of what they wanted.
This story reminds me a little of the "resignation syndrome" phenomenon in Sweden.
`awful food, like canned green beans'
When did a staple like canned green beans become awful? A little olive oil, salt and pepper, with or without heating them, and you've got a tasty and nutritious side. I mean, if you boil them for more than a minute they start to taste bad but that's an issue with preparation.
Shout out to everyone who had zero sympathy for the kids who ended up in the hospital because they would rather starve than eat green beans.
You're assuming this is a true story.
It's also the abundance culture in the US. If you grew up in a culture where food was scarce or you had to grow it to eat or it was rationed, this just didn't happen. When I first moved to the US and people were saying, oh I hate mushrooms because of the texture, I was shocked, but then I understood it's a privilege culture thing.
As the parent to “picky eaters” I endorse this. We (as a community) give our kids so many snacks that they can afford to be picky. It makes me crazy. Then I’m made to feel crazy when my husband is like “they need a snack”
Well? They just had breakfast 2 hours ago and I want them to eat the nutritious lunch I have prepared so can you not give them the protein bar that happens to have a pile of sugar in it? And on school days, I send them a small snack and good lunch but school serves muffins for breakfast* and other kids give them cookies from their snacks so my kids don’t eat their lunch.
*in California, every child gets a free breakfast at school.
Yes, I could do things differently to make my kids less able to be picky, but I only have so much control over my children’s diets and it’s not the fight I’m willing to tackle most days.
This is actually part of the diagnostic process for this condition though. Lots of children with Autism who have it have to have feeding tubes and stuff. It can be incredibly intense. My little boy is really really restrictive in what he eats and for a year I just gave him what everyone else was having for dinner and didn’t make a fuss either way. The little fucker didn’t crack once and actually reduced his list of foods. We lost pasta due to me giving him some with too much going on. I discussed it with a friend who works with young people with eating disorders and she told me to just give him what he feels comfortable eating and his growth is back up on track. He is only little but listening to him talk about why he doesn’t like things is really interesting. The other day he asked me if the ham in the sandwich I was making him was noisy ham. Wasn’t sure how to answer that one!
Yes! There are absolutely kids who will starve themselves, the idea that you can just send the kid to bed without dinner one night and they’ll become perfect eaters is insane. Kids with legit mental conditions can have insanely high resistance and parents have to balance making sure the kid gets adequate nutrition (we always made sure to have either kasha or quinoa at every meal since we knew our kid would eat it).
The key with this anxiety stuff is that the kid needs to be firmly but compassionately pushed into trying new things. If every meal turns into a screaming match with their parents it’s only going to make things worse. The kid needs to be brought onboard with the program and to have good therapeutic help. It’s definitely true that there are parents who are way too accommodating of their kids anxiety but the armchair diagnosticians who declare “in my day we just spanked our picky eaters until they ate properly” drive me nuts.
My older son absolutely would starve himself- his food aversions were that strong. He lived on a very limited diet for many years. We figured out how to expand his diet over years but I just laugh when people say kids won’t let themselves starve. Most kids will not. Some definitely will.
A lot of parents threaten this, but from personal experience (as an exceptionally picky eater and undiagnosed autistic), they'll mostly crack if you really do just refuse to eat things you don't like, commit to it, and follow through. It's brinksmanship.
Yeah, I was very picky as a kid, and while I was sometimes made to eat things I didn't like, my parents mostly left me alone. My mother said I would just refuse to eat if she didn't let me have something I liked, so she decided not to worry about it too much. There were usually some leftovers in the fridge I could have if I didn't like what was served.
I hated things like deli cold cuts, wonder bread, hot dogs, and peanut butter and jelly, so basically all the standard kid lunch foods. My school lunches tended to look like a charcuterie plate— a little salami or summer sausage with brie or gouda, olives, and a piece of fruit.
Wow! Sounds like you just had really good taste!
Do you have a bad sense of smell? I have always preferred really strong flavors like that - stinky cheese, garlic, onions, don't care for overly sweet things like caramel - and as an adult I discovered that my sense of smell is sub-par. I assume the two are related.
My daughter is going through the diagnosis process now and she is very very "picky". Loves Red Leicester cheese but not cheddar. Will eat pasta with Bolognese but not consider any other sauce. She started eating burritos this year (but only if made with beef chili and rice) and it was a total breakthrough. She will eat raw carrots but not any fruit except raspberries and blueberries. Yet she loves olives of any kind but won't even consider broccoli or cauliflower. She used to eat curry but had it too often so it's off the menu now.
She eats a lot of boiled eggs basically
Yeah, it's so weird. My son will eat octopus, but not a peanut.
My daughter would only eat beans as long as she believed they were nuts. Once she found out, she never had one again (though she will still eat green beans). Infuriating.
This is really interesting, and makes me feel a bit jerk-ish for assuming my friend's son was just being dramatic and excessively picky. Is there any rhyme or reason to the choices?
This is a bit of a tangent, but my friend's kid is also really into abominable YouTube channels about fancy rich people that are basically just videos of 20 year olds getting into sports cars, eating at fancy restaurant, and buying expensive clothes and watches. I noticed that the kid seemed to like foods that were coded "fancy" like filet mignon, lobster, Thai food (which is definitely perceived as "cool"), etc., and the things he didn't like to eat all seemed declassé, poor-coded, or mainstream.
I'm probably overthinking this. But seriously watching 20 minutes of that kid's YouTube consumption made me fear for the future and be curious about all kinds of strange youth culture I know nothing about since I don't have kids yet.
I mean, being dramatic and excessively picky can certainly be part of it! But there are foods that will just make him throw up.
I really don't know what the connecting factor is. He loves tuna, salmon, octopus (Spanish ones from a tin), chicken nuggets (but only the ones from McDonalds), grilled cheese (how Dad makes it), fried shrimp (only from Culver's), PB&J, Doritos, and Cheetos. Won't eat pizza with cheese on it (again, has to be Dad's). Everything has an asterisk.
Do you think this has to do with the little bits of peanut residue that linger in the mouth after eating them? I like nuts (and peanuts) but I can imagine that the residue could be an issue.
I guess if you need paint stripped, boiled egg farts will do the job!
That's why you have to not break, which is hard with autistic kids because their myopia gives them crazy unnatural willpower for a child.
It's not myopia-- it's that for us, the unpleasantness of eating (or in some cases smelling, touching or just being near) the food in question outweighs the unpleasantness of being hungry.
It's just utilitarianism with an unusual landscape of utility weights (which are, after all, completely arbitrary).
Or you could be like me and then stay up late and raid the pantry of cereal.
I would also like to push back on that. We all know that there actually are children who would starve themselves to death, children who need to be hospitalized and force fed because they have anorexia. If we can accept that children would starve themselves over body issues why would we refuse to believe that they can do it for other reasons?
Yeah exactly. People get super judgy when it comes to parents. I have two kids, one of them would literally throw up if given something that had the wrong texture until age 2 and yet is not at all a picky eater at age 5. The other ate everything we put in front of him until the age of 3 and then became incredibly difficult to feed. We keep trying different things and over the years we’ve significantly expanded his palate but this idea of “oh you just didn’t scream at your kid enough when he was little” is just not healthy.
The difference between “a picky eater” and an actual mental health condition is pretty huge. The older kid will literally track what you’ve touched and then scream at you to wash your hands if you touch one of the “bad” foods, similar to what you’d do if you saw someone touching raw chicken. That isn’t just being a picky eater, it’s basically a variant of OCD and the kid needs to be a willing participant in the treatment so having an antagonistic relationship with food and parents is not going to help.
FWIW I share the objections to this dumb social media account but I am 100% on board with this kids treatment, it sounds like the therapists know exactly what they’re doing.
Your last point is where I land and it disappointed me that Hadley (who I thought was a pretty good guest host overall) basically copped to thinking that the kid’s condition may have been a phase that the mom exacerbated or indulged despite the pretty detailed account Katie gave of what led to the diagnosis.
Would I be surprised to hear a B&R story where a mom turns her kid’s picky eating into social media fodder and lies about a rare diagnosis to lend the story mystique? Not at all. But that’s not what this seems to be and so there should be more benefit of the doubt to the parent, at least on the diagnosis/treatment front.
This was my parents rule too. If you didn't eat what mum or dad put on the table, you could go hungry! So, none of us four kids were picky eaters.
How did this work on you guys? I was/am very picky but we have 3 meals a day and I am not going to not like everything all three meals.... If I was so picky as to miss a meal, I can make it up in other places.
It worked fine on us as kids...I mean, we were never literally forced to eat anything we really didn't like for reasons of taste and were gagging over, but there were six of us in my immediate family and not a lot of money around, so food waste was a big no no. You absolutely had to eat your vegetables though, or no dessert. If you'd complained about texture I think mum would have laughed you out the room. We do all eat a lot of veg as adults!
I would have no problem not getting dessert to not eat my vegetables.
I have the same thoughts. One of my brothers is “on the spectrum” and another had sensory issues as a kid in the 90s (tags cut out of shirts, sweatpants only, no Halloween costumes, etc.) However we grew up on food stamps so there was no picky eating allowed in our house. You ate what was on the plate—canned spinach, canned beets, generic govt meat crumbles, etc. I remember a few basic childhood disagreements about food but never these meltdowns and outright avoidance that ARFID parents describe.
One theory I have heard is that it could be due to early childhood allergies or intolerances or even foodborne illnesses putting kids off of certain foods at young ages. But again, what has changed since 1993 that is functionally preventing kids from eating?
Also, very noticeable that ARFID folks seem perfectly capable of eating, essentially, junk food.
One of the most amazing statements I heard was a parent claiming that their son was an "extreme supertaster" and therefore couldn't eat chocolate. But he loves extremely spicy Thai food. But eggs are a no-go.
I was just thinking "oh my god the dog has trained you"
My BIL’s mom was a “super taster”. She worked for General Mills for a long time. Her whole job was to taste things!
Dogs are super smellers. It doesn’t make them not want to smell intense things. What a weird idea that mom has.
That sounds like a dream job!
I learned from her that Cheerios have that “almost something” taste for a reason. It creates something called “chasing flavor”, where you keep eating it, trying to intensify the flavor. You never get there, but you eat more than you would have if it had a strong taste.
😮 This explains why the proper mouthful of grape nuts is like 3/4 of a cup in volume....
I always think about that when I hear some of these stories - the people whose dog will only eat if they put the food in a certain dish, or at the table etc. not saying there aren’t kids with neurologic or mental health disorders who have genuine issues with food avoidance or rejection, but a lot of times it sounds like the way the issue is handled maybe reinforces instead of reducing it.
Being a supertaster is specifically about being extremely sensitive to bitter and sulphurous tastes. It doesn't really have anything to do with spice tolerance. So having issues with chocolate and eggs, but not with Thai food, actually seems pretty consistent.
I don't know if I'm a supertaster -- I love dark chocolate, so probably not a full one -- but eggs have always smelled like sulphur to me, even when fresh and no matter how well they're cooked. As an otherwise vegetable-loving kid, I hated cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) for the same reason. I'm otherwise an adventurous eater and have learned to enjoy those as an adult, but eggs still set off my gag reflex as if trying to make myself eat something rotten.
It's honestly a bit embarrassing -- brunch gets inconvenient -- and not something I like to draw attention to, but the aversive response is so intense and visceral that it's not something I've been able to train myself out of despite occasionally trying.
I think your idea about allergies or intolerances may be part of the explanation. Not all food allergies are life threatening or even severe. Food allergies have risen in the US since 2000 thanks to the biggest pediatrician's group in the US telling parents they should delay introduction of foods like peanuts until 18-24 months. Women were even told to avoid these foods while pregnant. The animal and epidemiological evidence showed the opposite at the time, so I'm not sure why they made that recommendation aside from lingering sympathy for Puritanism. Not being exposed to soil bacteria and parasites also probably raises the risk of food allergies (and autoimmune disorders) and that may have played a role now that kids are spending more time in structured activities and less in unstructured activities.
What I find a little off putting is that, typically, eating disorders at their root aren’t *about* food. Being a picky eater is dramatically different than anorexia, and I worry that people are inclined to conflate ARFID (which actually does seem to be food-driven) with other conditions that have deeper causes. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong though.
But think about the similarities: this child’s ARFID keeps the whole family focused on her. She obtains an illness identity, and everyone is dancing to her tune. That sounds precisely like an eating disorder.
Honestly, that doesn’t sound at all like my experience, though admittedly my experience is entirely subjective and based on unique and non-replicable circumstances. Personally as an anorexia patient I just wanted to be left alone, and that was a common thread among the women I was in inpatient and outpatient treatment with. But that was a long-ago era and different locale so again might not be representative.
It’s probably multi factorial, like most things.
I
I really remember going on a school camping trip and two of the children having a list of foods they ate including which type of crisps etc. and that was 30 years ago. I think we just have a name for it now and we are all just aware of the minutiae of each other lives because of social media. Of course that’s making it worse probably but I’m sure in 1993 parents were quietly buying safe foods for their children and not making a fuss about it. The autistic children I know who have this condition are both non verbal and their families are very offline. It’s just another thing they deal with.
My father was a picky eater well into adulthood.
He agreed to eat his first pizza in middle age when we were actually in Italy on holiday.
He was born in 1951. As a child he refused cheese, most veggies, baked beans… and loads more I can’t remember.
He doesn’t have any diagnoses. My nephew (his grandson) is autistic, though, so there may be something genetic going on.
Haven’t listened yet but I do think kids were always picky eaters. My own mom said I once said ‘I’ll eat it if you don’t make it again’. Kids have different taste bud receptors so don’t enjoy bitter tastes the way adults do. This is said to be why kids (generally) hate vegetables. I know I’ve also never liked the texture of raw tomatoes even tho I love the taste. Eating a tomato in a salad causes me to wretch. Whether that’s a gag reflex from some associative disorder (like the way the smell of oysters can make some people feel sick) or something else I don’t know.
I think now people are just prone to put labels on things whereas before it was ‘I don’t like it’.
I think your last sentence nails what bothers me about this - "I don't like it" is a me problem, "I have a texture issue" is a you problem that implies that you must provide me with something that does not agitate my serious texture based condition.
Mate, my ma was never providing me with anything other than the 10-12 recipes she knew. 😂 That woman had a full time job dealing with the very worst in society, her kids were getting what was on the plate and that was it.
Good point for my fave ‘it’s a you problem’ food story. University (london), going to Brussels for an EU institutions trip. All day travelling, arrive at this big city centre / conference hotel. About 80 students. Students had declared ‘regular diets / vegetarian / vegan’ (that was it - no nut allergy / halal / I don’t like corn options available. I’m sitting with a girl who is vegan. The waiters come out and serve the normal diet folk first - a slice of cold beef, a piece of lettuce and a slice of cheese. Shitty but the hotel is t going to care. Then they serve the vegetarians - they get the lettuce leaf and cheese. The vegan beside me gets the same, she starts complaining in bad French that she is vegan, can’t eat the cheese. The waiter looks at her, looks at the plate… just lifts off the cheese and walks away. Gal had a single slice of unseasoned lettuce for her dinner.
Yeah the idea that picky eating is some kind of new phenomenon is... bizarre. Nonsensical, really.
It's exactly the same phenomenon as people who want to gatekeep the definition of autism. "Back in my day, autism meant you were beating your head bloody daily! None of this social anxiety crap!" That kind of thing. The reason there are more people diagnosed now is that we're actually looking for it and have recognized that there's a spectrum of developmental issues here.
Don’t mention the A word…. It’s like beetlejuice to some round here.
Oh no-- I already did it!
Your last sentence is the answer. Everyone has a few foods they don't like and texture is a very common reason not to like something. It's just that now we have this quasi-medical label for it that's permeated our culture. Same thing with diagnosing people as narcissists rather than just calling them self-involved assholes. Language has shifted towards describing everything in medical and therapy terms.
As a child I couldn't eat anything with a jelly texture or fat, especially on a meat, there was always fat on it. Or anything like a pulled pork texture, meat strings. And I am 45 and grew up in Soviet Union where they weren't all that permissive. My mom once managed to buy a crab I think and it was a huge deal, but I couldn't eat it. There was some screaming and crying, she was literally trying to push that crab meat into my mouth, didn't succeed though.
But I did get over it, eventually, so now I am a vegan and never ever tried any seafood other than fish, so all good lol
I have a very strong aversion to bananas, as does my sister. As in we will vomit if we eat it. When we were growing up in the '80's and '90's this was a bit extreme, but we were allowed to pass up bananas because it if the kid is vomiting it's not worth making them eat it. Aside from that, we were basically told that if we didn't like what was served, we didn't have to eat it but we weren't going to get anything else. Some of this may be that people are more comfortable talking about food aversion. I also wonder if some of it is that parents didn't get the helpful tips about getting kids to try new foods and overcome aversion.
The other thing that may be going on is a change in the types of stress. Right now a lot of kids whose early years were in the pandemic (in the West Coast we didn't go back to normal until early 2023) and it simply wasn't possible for the parents to protect their kids from all of the social dysfunction in that time. There also seems to be a trend toward talking to kids about threats that are existential or far away rather than immediate and that may be driving it.