Do you suffer from a fear of eating expired or spoiled food? Does this make you want to avoid eating perishable foods altogether? You are certainly not alone! Many people demonstrate this distinctive fear when it comes to the things they will and will not eat.
Is fear of eating spoiled foods irrational? What are its consequences? Does this fear qualify a person to be diagnosed with avoidant restrictive food intake disorder? These are all very important questions to answer when it comes to the effects of perishable food phobia.
If you have arrived here looking for a community where you are welcome to learn everything about selective eating habits and especially fear of eating perishable foods, then you are in the right place! Please make yourself at home here… I am Adam and I suffered with extreme selective eating disorder for almost 40 years. Although now I am cured, I have great passion for helping people to better understand ARFID and find help, if they need it and desire it. You can read more about me in the My Story section if you like.
Reasons for Fear of Eating Expired or Spoiled Food
In a few cases, a person might have suffered a very bad experience from eating an expired or spoiled food item. They might have suffered food poisoning and gotten very sick. Occasionally, I do come across people who developed avoidance habits towards perishable foods after such an ordeal.
However, most people with a serious fear of perishable foods having gone bad have never had a serious episode of food poisoning. In many instances, they actually have no idea why they are so paranoid about their fear of expired foods. All they do know is that their fear is tangible and restricts them to a large degree in what they can and can not eat.
Ironically, this is a fear that is basically unheard of in under-developed countries where foods actually do regularly go bad. (In fact, most phobias, chronic pain and intractable idiopathic illnesses are virtually unseen in these underdeveloped countries). The majority of people who experience significant fear of eating spoiled food live in very developed countries with excellent food hygiene standards, dependable refrigeration and food handling practices…
Expired or Spoiled Food and OCD
This phobia can easily be misdiagnosed as OCD, as can cases of OCD be mistakenly diagnosed as ARFID. Not surprisingly, people with OCD also do suffer from avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, as well. I was always mild to moderately obsessive compulsive, but my selective eating disorder was incredibly severe!
Some people will check their food over and over to make sure it is safe before eating it. This behavior leans more towards OCD, since it is the compulsion to check which is the primary expression, rather than the actual inability to eat the food item.
Other people will simply avoid perishable foods and not create any rituals around checking their foods. In these cases, the person is obviously suffering from some degree of ARFID and not OCD.
When discussing either case profile, we are not talking about common sense precautions that any prudent person would take… such as smelling a food item to ensure freshness, checking the expiration date, etc. We are instead talking about ritualistic compulsion in OCD sufferers that rule the person’s behavior and complete inability to eat perishable foods in people who suffer from ARFID.
Overcoming Fear of Eating Expired or Spoiled Food
When it comes to treating ARFID conditions, people who suffer ONLY from this highly specific type of eating limitation are actually some of the easiest to successfully cure. A combination of general psychological and cognitive/behavioral therapy is typically very effective at resolving this specific type of selective eating disorder based on perishable food fear.
I also know many people who have been able to overcome this phobia of perishable foods all by themselves. A bit of effort can create awesome results in people who do not want to be ruled any longer by behavioral imperatives or eating restrictions imposed by themselves. An enlightened self-help program for ARFID can work wonders in these cases, as well.
The main impediment to successful treatment is the aforementioned common misdiagnosis between true ARFID and primary OCD. It is vital that people who suffer from each of these disorders receive the correct type of intervention in order to recover.
Of course, there is nobody forcing you to seek help. If you are here just to research some information and are quite comfortable living with your fear of eating expired or spoiled foods, then that is fine too, I lived with my extreme avoidant restrictive food intake disorder for decades and never thought I would change. My cure came about quite accidentally, which is one of the reasons why I feel it is so important to help others in their own quests to better understand why they eat (and refuse to eat) like they do,
