Are you one of those people who will only eat packaged food? Do you detest fresh foods and home cooking from scratch? There are many people just like you who prefer to eat all their food directly out of its commercial packaging with little or no preparation necessary.
Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder is a condition wherein a person eats a narrow range of food items and shows very strong preferences and prejudices for and against select foods. Why is packaged food such a common preference for people who suffer from ARFID?
Is eating only commercially packaged foods a problem? It might be and then again, it might not. It is certainly an interesting niche of selective eating and one that deserves to be explored thoroughly, which is exactly what we will do in this post!
Do You Only Eat Packaged Food?
Ok, so you only eat packaged food. What exactly are these foods? We are talking about food items that are pre-made into a ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat-and-eat format in most cases. These food items are not ingredients for cooking. They are pre-made solutions for eating… Open the package and dig in!
How strong is your preference for packaged foods? Is it a preference based on convenience and time? Is it a strong preference based on fear of foods that require preparation? Is it a compulsion to eat ONLY packaged foods due to some imperative within your mind? This is an important question to ask yourself so that you know where you stand…
Lots of people prefer packaged foods for convenience, cost or other factor. Although they might eat these items frequently, they do not necessarily have any type of eating disorder, although they may. People who have very strong preferences and compulsions to only eat packaged foods are probably suffering from some degree of avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, formerly called selective eating disorder. This is the same eating disorder that ruled my life for almost 40 years!
Problems with Packaged Food
Packaged convenience foods are not known for being healthy. In fact, most are chock full of chemicals, preservatives and have low nutritional value. In essence, they barely qualify to be called food.
Packaged foods are at the heart of the current obesity and diabetes epidemics worldwide. They are also the cause of many specific and general health issues. Let’s make this really clear… most packaged foods are NOT GOOD FOR YOU. Some are downright poisonous.
If you are only consuming these preserved, processed foods instead of eating actual healthy foods, then there is a good chance that negative consequences will follow. Results of eating a packaged food diet can include malnutrition, stunted growth, low body weight, excessive body weight and other issues, depending on many case-specific factors.
To balance the equation, some people eat mostly, if not exclusively, packaged foods for most of their lives and seem to do just fine. I never completely relied on packaged foods, but admittedly ate mostly packaged foods for much of the time I suffered from select eating disorder. However, for me it was not a compulsion to eat only packaged foods. It was more about simply eating the few things that I actually liked and accepted, versus the many food items that were unacceptable to me; packaged or not…
Only Eating Commercial Non-Foods
One way to break this habit is to try to create homemade versions of your favorite packaged foods using fresh ingredients. I understand that for many of you this will be a challenge; due to cost, convenience or eating habits. However, this strategy is a great way to reduce the impact of eating only commercially-prepared packaged food items with low nutritional value.
You might just find that the “real deal” is better than the packaged alternative. OR, you might gag yourself and flee back to the safety of your original packaged preference… Either way, the only way you will know is to try. I know that trying new foods is really hard for people with ARFID (and food neophobia) so I understand if you refuse to do it. However, by eating the same food, but prepared using fresh ingredients, you are compromising and have a better chance of being successful in trying something new and healthier!
Believe it or not, this was an important part of my own ARFID cure, which came about over a couple of years around the age of 37. I detail how I ended decades of extremely selective eating in the My Story section of this website and go into really deep and humorous detail in my helpful book, My Food Fear. Regardless of whether you want help with selective eating or just want to get a good laugh and have someone understand your super-finicky eating, I am sure you will love the book if you are still here reading this post now!
