As kids, many of us engaged in what our parents called “picky eating” — “Don’t be such a picky eater — try it, you might like it!” For whatever reasons, most kids grow out of most of their picky eating habits and learn to try new foods. Some of us may have a few food hangups, avoiding certain popular foods like the plague. But for most, eating different foods is part and parcel of the culinary experience.
Some adults, however, don’t grow out of their picky eating habits and, in fact, it may sometimes get even worse as they grow older. Adults with picky eating habits (also known as “selective eating”) may find it more difficult to eat in social situations, because of the limited choices on their own personal food menu.
Nobody knows why picky eating occurs in children or adults, but what little research has been conducted (mostly in children) suggests that it may or may not be directly related to food (for instance, one study of 8- to 12-year olds found that picky eating was more related to problem behaviors, not eating disturbances [Jacobi et al., 2008]). So if this is an “eating disorder,” it’s unlike virtually every other eating disorder.
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about this phenomenon (inexplicably found in their “Business” section), suggesting that the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the “DSM”) is considering adding adult picky eating to the list of disorders:
Doctors once thought only kids were picky eaters, and that they would grow out of it. Now, however, a taskforce studying how to categorize eating disorders for the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, due out in 2013, is considering recognizing for the first time a disorder to be called “selective eating” that could apply to adults as well as children. The DSM, a common psychiatric reference book, would currently lump picky eaters into a classification of eating disorder “not otherwise specified,” a catchall category for people who don’t meet the criteria for a major disorder.
Yet, nowhere on the American Psychiatric Association’s draft DSM 5 website on eating disorders is the term “selective eating” or “picky eating” mentioned (searches for such terms also turned up nothing on the draft DSM 5 website). It seems like quite a stretch that a disorder not even listed in the draft version of the DSM-5 would make it into the final version.
Reviewing the research literature for this term also turned up very little, especially with regards to studies about adult selective eating. So little, in fact, that it would be surprising to see this term even listed in the Appendix of the DSM, “Conditions requiring further study.”
This is not to minimize the impact and seriousness of selective eating (I know someone first-hand who has this concern). But it appears to be, from the limited knowledge we have of it, a fairly rare condition that probably doesn’t need its own label or category right now. What it does need is more research to help us better understand what it encompasses, how different selective eaters approach food, and what kinds of therapies might be helpful to curb this behavior if the person finds it troublesome or disturbing.
Read the full WSJ article: No Age Limit on Picky Eating
Reference
Jacobi, C. et al. (2008). Is picky eating a disorder? Int J Eat Disorders, 41, 626 — 634.
25 comments
OMG NO!!!!
its bad enough already without him adding that to his list of conditions NOOOOO!!!!
I already have to deal with his bloody mood swings.
I have been refusing for 3 years now to cater to his bloody pickiness I have kids which I have to teach to enjoy and experience with foods and to TRY things…if he refuses to eat anything other than his favourite foods what bloody chance have I got and I am NOT cooking multiple meals either he eats it or goes without!
In my experience most people over 75 are selective eaters. Even I in my mid-60s, although I travel a lot and love eating new things, have a short list of things I’ve decided not to eat any more. I’ve tried them, don’t like them, and don’t see why I should waste my time on them – pickled herring or even cucumber pickles, okra, overcooked liver (lightly cooked is okay), huge beef steaks (tiny ones are fine), shark; and then there are things I won’t eat on principle: shark again, any whale product, squid or octopus (they’re intelligent animals who deserve our respect), any endangered animal or plant. Many older friends have much longer lists, and only a few of them are unreasonable. We know what we don’t like from experience and we don’t need to prove anything by trying them again.
I’m now 65 and I have hated the smell and taste of garlic since I was very yong. It’s odd because I’m of Italian decent. I’m often told that I’m strange. I definately am and have been an extreemly picky eater all my life.
@wyvernsrose….you could be causing your child a lot of psychological damage. I am an adult picky eater & thank God my mother was not of your mindset.
I have to disagree with the authors statement:
“… it appears to be, from the limited knowledge we have of it, a fairly rare condition that probably doesn’t need its own label or category right now”
This is simply not true. Please check out http://www.pickyeatingadults.com & you will find a wealth of information on this topic as well as find that this is not a RARE condition.
Hey Picky Eaters and commenters on this site-
I’m a casting producer for a TLC show about picky eating adults and we’re currently looking for ADULTS with unusual eating habits and/or food addiction. For more info, please send an email to [email protected] with your name, age, number, and brief description of your eating habits.
Hope to hear for you soon!
Rebecca
I always thought I was just insanely picky and strange. It’s nice to know I’m not alone. I’m 23 and I still get chicken strips and french fries every single time I go out to eat and it’s on the menu. I hate trying new things. I hate veggies… I feel like I’m eating grass or something. I went to Olive Garden with friends once and I thought everything on the menu looked like puke… I asked if I could have the chicken strips off the kids menu and was denied – I told the waitress I wasn’t going to eat anything then, and she finally gave in with a stunned look on her face. It can be embarrassing… but I can’t help what I like and don’t like. :-/ I eat the same things almost every day and I’m okay with it. I’m not fond of change.
I think the kind of selective eating referred to here is like what Heather is explaining.
We have a young adult daughter who will pretty much eats only from the bread group. The rare change is when she will eat a cheese pizza. She is very embarrassed about it and wants to break out of it, but still cannot bring herself to eat outside of her very narrow menu.
I have been a picky eater my whole life. I am 47 years old and still only eat from a selected food list. I am 5’8 and when I graduated from high school, I weighed 100 pounds. If I didn’t get the foods I liked when I was younger, I would have chosen death. I am normal weight now, but I’m sure I would do the same today. It was never about looks or weight. It mostly was about looks and taste of my food, especially with products involved that I certainly didn’t like. I’m sure limiting my foods is unhealthy but I take vitamins in hopes of gaining proper nourishment. I’ve always felt this was a disorder of some sort, maybe associated with my stuttering. Most think it involves anorexia which is totally not me. I knew there had to be others out there like me. It is good to know we are not alone. I feel I definitely am very sensitive to taste as well. Fortunately, my husband is accepting of me and doesn’t judge my behavior. Life is good!!!!!
You should look up Duke Universitie’s study on the subject. And any google search will turn up reports of how this eating disorder has a pattern, affecting people who had negative experiences in childhood surrounding food and eating. I am also speaking as someone who suffers from this, and I for one am glad to know I’m not alone and that someone might be able to help me. I am 21 years old and until a few weeks ago I had never tried any fruit other than grapes. I am working 3 times a week through therapy, a support group, and an encouraging, patient nutritionist to get over my phobia of new food. To me, it is about what food is safe, and new food has always set off a red flag. My learned fear has been so engrained in my phisiology that I gag every time I try to swallow even a bite of a new food. I wish I had just eaten my freaking fruits and veggies as a kid, but instead I developed an eating disorder that is currently threatening my life.
I was always called a fussy eater and my parents used to hate it but i just couldnt eat the food they wanted me to. I ate the same things every single day but i didnt know why i couldnt eat other foods. I couldnt even stand the smell of some foods and had to leave the room when my family was eating them, like curries or fish. I was like this until a few months ago when i got help from a nlp practitioner who had previously had a similar eating disorder. I would definitley recommend nlp to anybody suffering with something like this because it has changed my life, i used to avoid places where i had to eat like meals with the family but now i enjoy showing off how well im eating. I only wish i had got help sooner than i did 🙂
What is nlp?
Oh man, I can’t believe I’m not the only one. I’ve been trying to change the way I eat forever!!! When I try to eat food outside of my set of standards, I gag. When I go abroad, I end up losing like 10 pounds because I’d rather not eat than eat things I don’t like. Has anyone had any luck getting past this? It’s embarrassing. I’m 24, and for lunch, I still eat a plain cheese sandwich or a pb&j sandwich. Life would be so much simpler if I didn’t have to eat at all.
I know exactly how you feel (I just wrote a huge post about it) but I would definitely say eating is my least favourite activity. I get anxiety about it and will go all day without eating. When I force myself to eat it wears me out so much that I have to go take a nap!
My 10-year old grandson eats a very limited diet: chicken nuggets and french fries, cheese pizza, Kraft macraroni and cheese character brands (not elbow macaroni version), Gushers fruit chews, vanilla ice cream, saltine crackers with creamy peanut butter, vanilla cake with vanilla sugar frosting, popcorn, McDonald’s sausage patties, and white milk. And of course, Coca Cola brand and sugary candies such as Skittles. That is it. That is his entire food range. No variations. No substitutions.
He gags and throws up if forced to even taste anything else, such as a single kernel of corn or a half-inch piece of orange.
Other things of note: as a baby, he immediately refused/spit out mashed bananas and scrambled eggs.
When eating, he continuously strokes his throat, because he says the food makes it itch. He suffers from eczema. He didn’t talk until age 2.5. He was ambidexterous until age 5. Now, he eats and writes with left hand and does everything else (i.e. throws ball) with right hand. He has been repeatedly tested, and only diagnosis is ADHD-inattentive type. He sees a psychiatrist (for ADHD meds)and psychologist for possible childhood depression, inability to express himself, and social immaturity and isolation. He is a tall, good looking boy and my heart breaks for him. His eating eccentricities just make him weirder, to his peers.
Help! We have tried starving him, forcing him, bribing him, talking with him – nothing works! He has not eaten a fruit or vegetable in about 7 or 8 years.
It may or may not help…but he sounds exactly like me as a child. What I discovered was it is mainly (although not always) a texture thing with me. Eg, I love peas fresh from the garden, but loathed cooked. Just the smell of Cooked broccoli will still make me gag, but I recently discovered I love VERY lightly steamed broccoli with lemon juice. It’s partially working out what sets me off, and partially forcing myself to try new things. But as a toddler anything other than chocolate pudding or fruit would apparently make me vomit, and to this day I still gag/vomit if I encounter cooked onion in my food.
Maybe see if he can keep down raw versions, in very small portions, with litte or no dressing?
i have two children like this my daughter is not too bad but wont eat fruit or veg she gags when tasting new food my son is alot worse since he was one he only eats cheese sandwiches, yogurts,cereals, and raisins . We tried starving him but it doesnt work at all its nice to hear its not just our kids tat have a problem wit food
I’ve been a picky eater my whole life. My mum tells me that all I ate when I was a toddler was chicken, rice and sheep brains. Now as a 20 yr old I can list the fruit I eat (apples and bananas). Apples HAVE to be all red and even then sometimes I can’t even force myself to take a bite and when I eat bananas I have to stop myself from throwing it up. I eat them as often as possible so I get some sort of nutrients. The same goes with vegetables. Food can’t be mixed, I only eat ice burg lettuce, I won’t eat food made in a dirty kitchen, I only order tiny starter meals in restaurants and just say I have a small appetite, I constantly starve because there is nothing I can eat…. It’s definitely debilitating. Would be lovely to see some awareness of it, it’s hard to eat around strangers that roll their eyes at you when you get picky and can’t help it.
As I read through the posts I was amazed that so many others experience the same thing I do with food. I don’t like eating and it isn’t because I am anorexic. I just don’t like food. Smells and textures bother me. I have been this way my entire life – I am now 44. Currently, our family is living in a foreign country in S.E. Asia. While I love living overseas it is very difficult to find foods I can eat. I am often hungry. Probably the biggest issue related to my picky eating is how it affects my life/my family socially. Our family is very social, but it is stressful to go out to eat with friends as I have a tough time finding things on a menu that I can eat. I too tend to go straight to the children’s menu. I have two children. My first son’s palate seems to be typical for a child his age. My second son is exactly like me. He will eat approximately 5 different things. He gags and becomes hysterical if we attempt to feed him anything new. My heart breaks for him. My husband was initially hellbent on making our son eat a variety of foods as he didn’t want him to end up in my situation as an adult. At this point, he sees that regardless of what we do, it doesn’t change anything. I appreciated reading the previous posts as it doesn’t make me feel so alone.
I am an adult picky eater. I am 18 years old and currently attending college. Throughout my entire life I have been extremely picky with food, and I’ve always known I was different from everybody else. I have been diagnosed with anxiety and mild OCD, and my therapist told me that my eating habits were linked to the diagnosis. I think it has to do with my OCD. Anyways, this has taken a toll on my life, and I’ve always been trying to incorporate more foods into my diet (with some success) so that I can participate in social interactions more. I hate making excuses to not go somewhere only because I know there will be food I don’t like. Because of my pickiness, I hate going camping without family, sleepovers, going to restaurants, and other trips that could involve eating something I don’t like. To be honest, I’ve been doing better over the years, because I’ve been trying to eat more diverse things. I eat we’ll enough now to be considered healthy (which is great), but I’d still love to be able to eliminate the stress of picky eating when it comes to social events. I don’t don’t think the word “picky” is suitable for people like me, the problem we have is something more than just not liking a food… It’s deeper than that, maybe psychological. It’s a shame that this isn’t studied more, and that people aren’t educated about it. For the person with the problem, being told they’re ungrateful, wasteful, weird, unhealthy, and even picky is an attack on something they can’t help. I feel it’s almost like a disability, or an eating disorder in itself. It feels like a curse…
From my research the official name is going to be listed as avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder.
And I hope it is listed, because the traditional advice for picky eaters sure did not work for me, and may have made my issues worse. If it was a recognized issue maybe parents could receive better advice other than they can eat it or starve (which I often did for days at a time until my parents had no choice but to cave in).
My son is on the Autism spectrum and has a restricted diet. I have to disagree with this article about how rare the condition is. I believe this is quite common for children on the spectrum. For him it definitely seems to be a sensory sensitivity related to his diagnosis. He gags on food that is too juicy, rubbery or slimy etc. He is also sensitive to the temperature of his food and doesn’t like it being ‘contaminated’ by other foods. For example, he would refuse to eat a piece of cucumber that had a fleck of grated carrot stuck to it, even though he would eat both of these foods separately. Most of the foods that he does eat are crunchy, raw, separate, plain and predictable. He is literally fearful of new foods and drops foods from his repetoire when he hasn’t eaten them for a little while. It isn’t just about preferring junk foods either. Most of his preferred foods are healthy. (Eg.certain raw veggies, milk/cheese/yogurt, apples/melons, bread/pasta/rice/crackers). He often wants to try treats at parties but ends up spitting out lollies and cakes because they are “too yucky”.
This trait appears to be running in my family as well. My sister is extremely limited in her food intake and in her late thirties it now seems to be affecting her health. She subsists mainly on carbs ( milk, bread, cookies etc) and only eats sugary fruits and some leafy vegetables. My mom says she immediately rejected all meats, most vegetables, grains and cheese since she was a baby. Tshe describes other foods as offensive in taste, smell and texture, and seems to have highly sensitive senses in other ways. Now we are seeing my 3 year old nephew ( son of another sister)display similar traits. He will gag on foods, scream and shout no if offered anything unappealing. He will only eat yogurt, bread, muffins, fruit snacks, rice cakes and popcorn. And milk, only from a bottle. He is disturbed by colour and texture. I am wondering if this is a spectrum related disorder in the autism range. My sisters eating is certainly disordered and has resulted in obesity and type 2 diabetes.
It may be rare, but it is different from the pejorative label “picky eater.” I get sick simply from smelling certain foods. I avoid an entire food group the name of which I shudder to even write. This causes suffering, especially as an adult faced with numerous social dining experiences. I am not a huge fan of the DSM “tome,” but I honestly think this merits acknowledgment.
I have always been an extremely picky eater ever since I was little and I am still the same. Just if something doesn’t “look” good, I won’t even try it and then when I actually do try it, it usually turns out to be gross. It’s like I already know how something’s gonna taste.
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