Struggling with food aversions? Discover simple, sensory-friendly strategies to make mealtimes easier and support picky or sensitive eaters.
When I was a child I used to peel my hot dogs because I did not like the feeling of crunching through the skin. At some point, my parents stopped peeling them for me and I had to peel them myself.
Eventually, I decided to just eat the skin because it was easier and didn’t take as long.
The aversion didn’t really go away, but I’m an adult now and I buy the hot dogs that bother me the least. I still side eye the hot dogs if we go out to eat before ordering one. Some hot dogs (and cooking methods) make the skin crunchier. 🤢
I don’t order something that makes me uncomfortable to eat. That’s often an adult privilege that kids don’t get in all settings. This can be a huge struggle for neurodivergent kiddos and ALWAYS a struggle for their parents. Parents want what’s best for their kids, but… you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
So let’s talk about sensory issues with food.
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This blog is for educational purposes only. This information is best case scenario, at least within the scope of my knowledge and experience at the time I write the post. Not only does everyone have different approaches to parenting and life- and my way may not be your cup of tea, but also- I am not perfect, nor do I want anyone to imagine that I am. Despite being a therapist and having a whole host of really cool techniques for all the mental health related things, I am constantly learning and trying to do better.
I’m hoping that this blog can help you. When we share what works for us, we can help others develop their own toolkit for improving their mental health. As an affiliate with Amazon and other affiliate networks, I may earn from qualifying purchases made with product links on this site. If you’re a current client of this practice, you have access to therapist-created resources free of charge.
The problem for most of us with food aversions is that we generally don’t have them for unhealthy food.
Why? Well, when you think about it, the Oreos taste the same if you buy the same kind each time. But if you buy corn in the winter versus at the perfect point in the season during the summer, you get an entirely different product.
Not knowing how something is going to taste is frustrating. Corn or lettuce that has been harvested at the wrong time is pretty gross.
But the perfect corn? Chef’s kiss!
Of course this gets us into the issue of nutrition. It’s really hard to have a healthy diet with food aversions.
Without the healthy diet, you end up with digestive issues. You don’t feel as well. You can develop health problems.
One of my favorite kids’ YouTube channels is Operation Ouch. They’re twin doctors who do educational videos about your health for kids. They did two videos about nutrition that I think are really fantastic for showing kids how their diet impacts their life.
Video 1: Eating Bad Food / Healthy Food for a Week
Video 2: Poo (yes, they show it)
Even as an adult, watching those videos made me second guess how I eat and want to make some changes.
Types of Providers Who Help with Food Aversion
This is not my specialty area so I wanted to give you a quick list of the types of providers who work with kids or adults with food aversion issues. You’ll want to find someone who specializes in the age group and issue specific to you or your child. This is really important help to seek out when there are substantial issues that don’t benefit from the things you’re trying at home.
PLEASE, please, please… always run these types of health issues past your pediatrician/PCP, particularly if the diet change is sudden. Health issues, including food allergies and intolerances, need to be ruled out.
1. Occupational Therapists (OTs) — Sensory + Regulation Focus
2. Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) — Oral-Motor + Swallowing Focus
3. Feeding Therapists (specialty OTs or SLPs): Specialized in this particular topic in their field
4. Behavioral Therapists (e.g., BCBA, CBT-trained therapists)
5. Psychotherapists / Mental Health Therapists
6. Dietitians (RDNs) with feeding expertise: Help with nutritional piece and meal planning
Tips for Managing Food Aversions
Here are some tips that I’ve found to work for me and/or my kids.
1. Make a list of foods that you like… Particularly ones that you know are deficient in your diet.
Here’s my fiber list… I only added foods that I like. I adjusted the items for my preferences… i.e. I generally won’t eat apples with the peel.
But you may want to make a list for fruits, veggies, Vitamin C (don’t get scurvy, matties!), protein, etc.
2. Some of it is trial and error. Try something, see if you like it, and be okay with tossing it if you don’t.
I love the idea of hosting a small neurodivergent party to try different foods so people can have the experience without ending up with a bunch of food they hate. It allows people to take just a teeny bit to try.
At the end, people can put their names in a little contest to take home the leftovers for the foods they liked… or the original makers can take home leftovers.
As an adult, the guilt of throwing away food is pretty bad. This would help me so much.
We did a fruit tasting for my son for his birthday one year and found a bunch of different fruits for us to all try. We each rated what we thought the foods were on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. I won’t lie… I struggled about the one on the bottom right!
If you want to treat it like a game, I added a worksheet for this to my nutritional tracking sheet. If you’re a client, I have copies in my office- just remind me!
3. Trying new foods is important, even when you think you don’t like that food.
As an adult, I will generally try foods that I dislike IF they’re cooked in a different recipe or cooked in a different way. I joke that there are a lot of foods that I wish I could tolerate. For example, I love the IDEA of eggplant. It’s so pretty! But I’ve disliked it in almost every recipe- until I found a frozen veggie mix at the grocery store I liked. For some reason, I like the eggplant in that mix.
4. Grow your own food (and encourage your kids to help)
Fresh produce tastes better.
It’s really hard to gauge if you like a food when the grocery store is sending you products at varying levels of ripeness.
5. Try to get ripe fruits and veggies…. if needed, freeze, dry, can or freeze dry food that you buy during the ‘good’ season for it.
If you like something homegrown that you can’t get a tasty version of during the winter, can, dry, or freeze dry the food for winter.
It’s a pain. But being neurodivergent can kind of be a pain sometimes. Get your kids involved in helping with the process though- they’re going to have to take this over at some point when they’re older.
6. Fix the foods so you can tolerate them.
Sometimes you can fix food in a way that you can tolerate it… I put a lot of things into a morning smoothie to make them tolerable and meet my nutritional guidelines for the day.
These are three Bunches of kale from the grocery store. I dried them in a dehydrator and then pulverized in the food processor. This allows me to put it in my smoothies or my kids smoothies without us tasting it. It does turn them a little green though.
I call this sneaky food… I don’t need to lie to my kids or myself about it… but I say it’s like tricking my brain.
Note: As a kid, I HATED when grownups tried to sneak raisins into food like chocolate chip cookies to trick me. I didn’t like the texture and I could tell. It made me suspicious of food. It also made me suspicious of my parents. It also felt like everyone was laughing at me. That sort of sucks. Don’t do that. Most school age kids can discuss something and you can problem solve a bit around issues.
Top left: kale spread out next to a dehydrator
Top right: blender with dried kale pulverized in it
Bottom left photo: kale powder in a small bin with a measuring tool
Bottom right photo is chia seeds pulverized into a powder in a small bin.
I find it slightly easier to do things like this in bulk versus trying to do it everyday.
I save scoops from protein shakes and keep them with the product. This is one less step when I need to measure it out.
Chia seeds are a good way to add fiber- I don’t get enough of without them. Fiber can impact your health quite a bit. But I can’t tolerate chia seeds floating around in my smoothie. I use my food processor to chop those up too.
7. Get into cooking!
One of my food aversion kiddos has really grown in what he will try when he gets excited about cooking or baking something, particularly if it’s a fun activity with a parent.
8. Play games with foods.
Play with your food… or make it fun.
9. Lower the bar.
My parents used to make me eat everything on my plate and I think it probably caused more problems than it actually helped.
I generally asked my kids to try things. If they don’t like it, I don’t force them to continue eating it. I want them to see if they’ll like it.
I also have this hope that they will eventually acquire a taste for the food if they try it every time we serve it. This is certainly been something I’ve seen myself grow in… And I think my kids as well. It does get easier when they’re older however.
I’ve found with my own kids that the intense issues with food aversions last a bit longer into early elementary school than my friends with neurotypical kids report (or kids without food aversions). Like all development, it varies from child to child. But for me, I’ve found that at some point you reach the stage where the kids still have food aversions, but it’s more seen in subtle choices and they will be a bit more flexible in trying new things.
Also- some of you may have gotten into this parenting gig with the goal of only eating healthy and eating all organic. You may need to have a little bit more flexibility if you have a neurodivergent kid with food aversions.
10. Early exposure to healthy food.
I do think that early exposure to certain foods as a baby makes you more likely to eat them. My parents cut my crusts off my bread as a kid and it took me years to eat the crust. I probably was into adulthood before I started eating them.
My kids have always eaten the crust but I have never cut crusts off so it always was what they expected. I often wish my family had eaten healthier when I was a kid because then I might not have so many aversions to the foods that I really should be eating to stay healthy and live a long life.
But we also exposed my kids to quinoa early on and it’s still a tough sell.
11. Show excitement over food when it tastes good to you.
“Oooh! Taste this!!!! It’s great!” can get a bit more compliance than “EAT EVERYTHING ON YOUR PLATE YOUNG WOMAN OR ELSE!”
Spoilers: The PDA’ers will “or else” like they’ve never “or else’d” before if you say “eat it or else!”
But don’t overplay it either. I’ve had meals that I made and didn’t love. I ate them still but I’m not overselling those to my kids. They don’t taste good. I want them to try it (because everyone has different taste in food), but I don’t want them to hate baked ziti forever because I did a bad job cooking it.
12. Getting us to eat healthier: add healthy snacks in convenient places. Prep them at the beginning of the week if they require prep. Involve the kids.
Put less healthy snacks in less convenient places so you need to walk past the good stuff to get to the bad stuff.
- Scooping ice cream is a pain compared to grabbing a fudge pop that is already portioned out (and also slightly healthier).
- Grabbing a small container of sliced cucumbers is easy. Washing and slicing strawberries is less easy (I don’t generally prep fruit because it’s motivating enough to eat that we will all do the prep work in the moment).
13. Find substitutions that work.
I’m trying to eat less sugars, but I refuse to eat whole wheat bread because there is a texture difference. I found a lower sugar “white” bread that works well for me and has a higher fiber content than normal white bread.
I don’t really like whole wheat tortillas, but I LOVE corn tortillas which are a bit healthier than normal white flour tortillas.
Find what works for you or your child.
14. Add- don’t subtract, if possible.
It’s a lot easier to add fiber to your diet than to cut sugars. There is something about taking away things that just triggers the “I DO WHAT I WANT’ impulse.
It’s all one big experiment…
This all feels like experimentation. And it is… maybe all good parenting is? You accept your child for who they are and you experiment to see what works best for them.
I experiment on myself all the time- what’s the best alarm system to beat my time blindness? What clothes feel best against my skin? What hair style bothers me the least today?
And that’s exactly what I’ll tell my kids when they’re in therapy due to having a therapist as a parent some day. (wink)
We are all scientists trying to figure out how we can live our best lives without losing who we are.
