Eating When Food Makes You Nervous
How Cooking Meals as You Eat Helps to Reduce Fear
This weekend, my husband and I decided to go eat some hotpot to celebrate his graduation from his master’s degree program. If you have never had hotpot, you basically get pot of broth in front of you boiling, and you cook your dinner as you eat. This particular set up was over at Jin-Shabu in the plaza over on the northeast corner of Dobson and Warner in Chandler, Arizona.
I am a fairly picky eater. In fact, I think at a certain point, I would have met the diagnostic criteria for Avoidant Reactive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). Before I began dating my husband, I would have been really nervous about eating somewhere like this. There is a lot of vegetables, foods that I am unfamiliar with, lots of foods touching each other, and very few “safe foods”. However, in expanding my horizons with how I eat food, it has helped me feel more confident in eating more types of foods.
There are a few types of meal settings that are similar to hotpot, like fondue and Korean BBQ, where you cook the foods in front of you as you eat. I think there are a few factors that really help one feel safer with eating in these types of settings:
You get to pick out exactly what you are eating
You get to control how it is cooked
They are presented in small bite-sized portions
Sauces are usually encouraged
There isn’t a large plate of food in-front of you that you might feel obligated to finish
Growing up, I had been exposed to fondue, but usually it was reserved for holidays. As an adult, I have found it easy to have it regularly at home. I just needed a fondue pot (you could use fondue pots for hot-pot meals too), to cut up some meat and vegetables, and have ingredients to throw together for the broth. By having this kind of dinner at home, I have felt it even more safe to experiment, try new combinations of flavors, and to test out various textures. The same goes for eating Korean BBQ at home, just needing a tabletop griddle instead (and those griddles can also make a nice breakfast meal too!).
My parents really struggled with my food sensory issues and ARFID when I was a kid. I imagine they were embarrassed or ashamed, thinking that my limited palate was a reflection of poor parenting. This was especially noticeable whenever we ate around their parents or with neighbors. I also know they were also concerned that it was affecting my health (it wasn’t, but society often encourages us to get hyper fixated on health).
Unfortunately, I felt their stress and internalized it to mean that I was shameful, I was an embarrassment, that there was something wrong with me, that I should be able to get over it, and since I couldn’t, I wasn’t trying hard enough. Those feelings just made mealtime and eating that much more frightening for me. I could feel their eyes watching me eat, where even my attempts to hide my displeasure were met with shame and disappointment.
Eating something new makes most people hesitant. You might take a moment to figure out if your taste buds like it, maybe process how you feel about the textures, take a few bites to reflect. When you have ARFID, you might be a bit overwhelmed at the sensory experience, because it can be more intense. Outside of ARFID, this is also a really common experience for those of us that are neurodivergent, especially aligning with sensory differences among those on the autism spectrum.
Having experienced this personally, the hardest part about these struggles wasn’t the food itself, it was taking in the feelings of those I loved and internalizing it to mean that I was failing. And that feeling was associated with food! Food is more than just a way to nourish your body, but it is how we celebrate with others, take pleasure in sensory experiences & feel comfort, and to take part in our culture, connecting with others. When our relationship with food is damaged, we have a harder time experiencing joy, safety, knowing who we are, and feeling loveable.
If you love someone who feels nervous around foods, I encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to eating together. The goal is to help them feel safe and to enjoy food, to enjoy the experience. Cook-while-you-eat kinds of meals are a great way to help do that, without forcing anything. It gives a lot of control to the person eating and it is fun!
