as ive written about before on here, ive had a lifelong struggle with food aversions and picky eating. im mostly past this and am far from the pickiest person at work, which still strikes me as odd (in your mind youre as picky as you ever were). that being said, just because you can and do eat a lot of foods doesn't mean that there aren't weird things that come up from time to time.
one frustrating thing is as it pertains to so-called "ultraprocessed" foods. As defined by Anne-Marie Stelluti of the Canadian Society of Intestinal research:
The term [ultra-processed] comes from the NOVA food classification system, a system created to classify foods based on how they are processed and for what purpose (extending shelf life, fortifying with vitamins and minerals, creating ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat foods, etc.). They classify food into four groups: unprocessed or minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are defined as “formulations of several ingredients which, besides salt, sugar, oils, and fats, include food substances not used in culinary preparations, in particular flavours, colours sweeteners, emulsifiers, and other additives used to imitate sensorial qualities of unprocessed or minimally processed foods and their culinary preparations or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product”.
Yeah that last category describes....most of my diet outside of work. and with all likelihood most of yours. Look at some of what Stelluti goes on to give as examples of ultraprocessed food (Adapted from PAHO 2015):
- pop and fruit drinks
- sweetened yogurt
- sweet or savoury packaged snacks (e.g., cookies)
- candies and cake mixes
- mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- margarines and spreads
- breakfast cereals
- cereal and energy bars
- energy drinks
- instant soups, sauces, and noodles
- poultry and fish nuggets, hot dogs
- many ready-to-heat products: pre-prepared pies, pasta, and pizza dishes
most of us with food aversions know: that category is most of the easy foods! the ones that don't take spoons! these were mostly not foods we had for, like, most of human history and were engineered, with laser precision, to be appealing and mass producable, usually without variation. and oh did they take a hold of me
these foods particularly manipulate me bc like...they're easier. sure, im not a picky eater completely anymore but there are still a lot of foods that i like, technically eat, but in effect never have. often these are things that ill gladly have from a restaurant but NEVER at home, like roasted vegetables or, ya know, most things not in category 4. but home cooking for me still has a lot of trauma associated with it and having these things at home is, well, really hard.
i know that with repeated exposure i could learn to love real food outside of restaurant contexts and enjoy making it. ive done it before for gosh sakes. but the sirens song of the Easy always takes me. the low cognitive effort food, the lean cuisine individual pizzas, the clif bars, the stuff packed with preservatives and junk. its there. it knows i have a full time job and after a day of stress its just too hard to like, not just make food but psych yourself up to actually eat it.
i pay a heavy price for this reliance on UPF, particularly gastrointestinally. You might, too. You might take your Bad Gut™ as just being a weird unexplainable thing. maybe an autism thing. but even when it is an autism thing...well, its not there all the time. you know when i never have gut problems? Europe. My mom notices the same thing, as do some coworkers of mine. But when you're in europe on vacation you're, most of the time, not eating as much processed food. youre going to restaurants and almost definitionally ultra-processed foods arent used to cook, unless you're vegan.
its essentially a coping mechanism that i don't know how to get rid of by myself, in a world where we're faced with increasing evidence of how bad this stuff is. like, studies of thousands of people have found that these foods being more than 20% of your diet is associated with cognitive decline. Eating more of them is associated with depression and anxiety, and why wouldnt they? even if they make it worse, they're there :) they're easy :) they're your friend :)
As an onion headline put it a while ago, Still Some Nutella Left In Jar, Reports Depression.
But yeah. Its hard to do unguided and i hate that this stuff is so integrated into society.
