by Ditte Young
Updated on May 14, 2025
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
As you may already know, I am the mother of an autistic child. He used to have normal eating habits when he was young. His neurologist thought he was too skinny, so she ordered him to eat a particular food to make him gain more weight.
After only 2 months of certain food products, he became, in my way of seeing it, a picky eater. I had to spend many years figuring out how to reintroduce new foods to him, or certain foods he used to like.
Many years later it became apparent to me that making him eat new food he liked and making him choose had to have had severe consequences in the long run… after finding out he was an autistic child. It became clear to me that when it comes to his mealtime behavior, it wasn’t so different from anything else in his life. He needed things to be recognizable and easy to digest.
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First, I had to determine if my son had developed in his mouth, stomach, and intestinal system to be able to digest the new food products I wanted to introduce to him. It was very frustrating for me, as he had normal mealtime behaviors before the visit to the neurologist. A physiotherapist can help you figure out if your child suffers from reflux or has disabilities with the mouth, stomach, and intestinal system.
If your child is late in developing those areas, it could be the main reason for your child to become a picky eater when it comes to the meals you serve or introducing new food products to them.
Many autistic children I know of are picky eaters because the food they take in needs to be recognizable to them as well. The food needs to have a firm consistency for most children with an autism spectrum disorder to be able to digest and taste it. The more recognizable the new food is, the better it is for an autistic child. That is why I don’t think the children on the autism spectrum are truly picky eaters. I think it is too difficult for them to exhibit positive behavior when it comes to new food products they are unfamiliar with. As in so many other situations, most autistic children have resilience towards new things in general.
If you consider food as a component, then imagine that the firmer the meal, the easier it is for autistic children to recognize it.
Most children on the autism spectrum prefer crunchy food products, such as French fries, nuggets, salty crackers, chips, or other food items with a crunchy texture. Since most of these food products, as mentioned, are high in oil and salt, children on the autism spectrum don’t have to work hard to swallow, taste, or digest these food products.
The eating habits become a routine for children with autism spectrum disorders, too, and quickly they know what kind of food products will not overstimulate their inner system as well.
If you start to look at the children with autism’s mealtime behavior as food selectivity instead of picky eating, then life gets easier for your child and you as well. Then you can create room and space to introduce new food products to the child with autism instead of being frustrated and feeling like a failure every single time dinner is served.
Most children with autism who are being interpreted as picky eaters dislike new food products that will overstimulate them, and they don’t know that. Many parents will very much prefer their children to taste new food, regardless of whether they have children with autism or not, which I am very supportive of. If you look at the food as a component, then imagine a cracker is a single food component, since it consists of the same on the inside as on the outside.
Food selectivity is easily addressed by considering mealtime behavior as a significant aspect of the autism spectrum, rather than focusing solely on picky eating.
Suppose you look at most normally functioning children; they also prefer to separate their foods. Many of these children appear to have food selectivity as well, if their parents don’t understand that their mouth isn’t yet developed enough to distinguish between different tastes and textures in food. Meat has one structure; a potato has another structure in the mouth, and a carrot has a third structure and feeling in the mouth. Besides, it tastes different, and it also feels different.
That is the reason many children with autism dislike food products that vary too much, such as a cucumber or tomatoes. Imagine what it feels like inside the mouth of your autistic child, who senses the world more intensely than you do, and they bite into a tomato. First, we have the tomato skin, then the tomato flesh, and then there is water and tomato seeds in there. That is the main reason for the food selectivity I see amongst many of the children within the autism spectrum.
I would never force an autistic child to eat.
Remember that your child is sensitive most of the time and will remember a situation combined with an emotion, storing it in their nervous system and brain.
If the energy and emotions surrounding a child suggest that the child is wrong or misbehaving because the parents interpret their behavior as picky eating, your child will likely remember that situation and develop food selectivity more easily.
Then the problem is not simply about the food products and the resilience to take in new food products anymore, but also a matter of the emotion your child senses from you as a parent. This way of seeing picky eating is also useful for many other children and their parents who aren’t within the autism spectrum.
I will recommend that you look at the food products your autistic child prefers or likes. Your child will eat something at one point and not starve to death. Maybe your child will only eat toast? Maybe your child is so food selective that they only eat the same thing three times a day.
The journey from toast bread to eating spaghetti Bolognese is way too long. Imagine that the bread is a one-component food product because it consists of the same on the inside as on the outside. The toast bread becomes predictable and manageable for your child to swallow or digest. I recommend you temper your ambitions and help your child to slowly take in harder bread or toppings on the toast at first. You can start by adding a minimal number of toppings to a small piece of bread. That could be butter or another spreadable topping.
If your child likes one spread, you can gradually add more of that spread to the toast, and this development can take weeks or months before your autistic child accepts it. Your child’s system needs time to adjust to the new emotions, smells, and structure of the food. When your child can eat toast with spread on it, you can take it to the next step and try putting a little piece of ham or cheese on top of one of the sides of the toast bread. I believe that all children need to feel a sense of success. They sense immediately if you put pressure on their mealtime habits, so you must be relaxed too while helping your child develop new food habits.
Best wishes to you,
Ditte Young ❤️
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