Do You Know About ARFID?

Tricking the tongue

Illustration by Maria Hahne

By Samara Breger¹

“Do you know about ARFID?”

I have been expecting the question.

“Yeah,” I tell my therapist. “I don’t think I have it.”

She looks at me for a long time. “Think about it,” she says.

ARFID, or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, earned its definition recently. Unlike the big two—anorexia and bulimia—it has little or no correlation with body image. It’s basically extremely picky eating. Some develop it due to texture aversion, some due to fear of choking, stomachache, or nausea. Some just don’t have an appetite. Those with ARFID restrict their diet to the blandest of foods, the least surprisingly textured, the most reliable. Processed food becomes a familiar friend—the industrially indistinguishable nugget or homogenous, hyperbolic paraboloid of the Pringle. People with ARFID rely on the bland, the unsurprising, the “safe food.”

This is not me.

Yes, food hurts. My stomachaches are frequent and terrible. Most often, they are not from bad food, but bad eating—eating at the wrong time, the wrong amount, the wrong speed. Horror ensues. Huddled on the bathroom floor-horror. Writhing in pain with a heating pad-horror. I dread lunch. I dread dinner. Food frightens me. It frightens me a lot.

Yes, I’m also afraid of texture. I’ll end a meal abruptly with the complaint that the food has “turned on me.” A bit of gristle. A limp string bean. A vein in a chicken drumette. These things are, in the most literal sense, gag-worthy. This is the common culinary complaint of the neuro-diverse (I have what I can only refer to as a hard-luck case of ADHD.) Texture, particularly surprising texture, is enough to send food from mouth to napkin.

But I don’t have ARFID. I can’t. I can’t, because, unlike most of those with the disorder, my true enemy is the bland. From my hours on the ARFID subreddit (where else?) I’ve come to understand that many people’s safe foods are the exact foods that send me into a panic. Mashed potatoes. Chicken breast. Broiled salmon. The idea of sitting in front of a plate of bland food makes me feel like I’m on the starting line of a marathon and I haven’t done a single practice run. Conversely, the foods that most people with ARFID wouldn’t dream of touching—anchovies, olives, oysters—are my saving grace. I shock my tongue into appreciating what I’ve given it. Gojuchang. Calabrian chili. The stinkiest cheese imaginable. In the sour and spicy and everything tongue-numbing, I find my appetite.

Sometimes, flavor isn’t enough. I have to turn my food into non-food. Pretend food. Storybook food. If I can imagine it on a hobbit’s table, it suddenly becomes appetizing. Sometimes I fixate. I can eat a burger, yes, but only in several hours, as I need to mentally prepare. The burger must not have a bun (too bland!) and be covered in (sharp!) cheddar and raw onions. I will think of this burger all day until it becomes nearly real to me, my burger tulpa, a food conjured from my own imagination. A dream-food. A pretty food, like the grapes and bleu cheese in a still life. I can turn it into art, and suddenly it is no longer the enemy.

I am obsessed with toasts. Anchovy, butter, soft-boiled egg, lemon zest, red pepper flakes. Goat cheese, Manuka honey, peach, rosemary. Radish, boquerones, more butter, more lemon, all neatly arranged on sourdough bread. These tiny, elegant things are mine to eat. I think about them when I wake up, while I make them, while I eat them, and for the rest of the day. Wasn’t that good? Wasn’t that edible? Shall I make it again tomorrow? The next day? Every day for two weeks straight? Pretty things! Things in lovely tins and stylish jars. Things that conjure pleasant imagery: rose hip jam. Lavender lemonade. Strawberry soup. Things I like the idea of eating. Foods that someone else, someone I could want to be, would enjoy. Me as a fairy queen, licking dew from a flower. That sort of me.

I wrote a book about vampires. In it, the main character spends most of her time trying to figure out how vampires can eat something other than blood. She misses food, its wide variety of tastes and textures. Were I in her shoes, I would probably not make the same effort. I dream of a food pill that would make obsolete all of my food-related mental gymnastics. If I could nourish myself with one, palatable thing, I would be happy for the rest of my life.

So, do I have ARFID? I still don’t know. Has my aversion to texture and my predilection towards stomach pain ruined my relationship with food? God, I hope not. But I can’t ignore the fact that I’ve created a mental Rube-Goldberg just to be able to have lunch. I love food. I hate food. Rapt, I watch a sushi chef break down a whole tuna. Horrified, I turn from a microwave meal in its frozen state. Maybe my relationship with food is more singular—it’s a lonely thought.

“Have you heard about ARFID?”

“Yeah,” I tell my therapist. “I don’t think I have it.”

She looks at me for a long time. “Think about it,” she says.

I do.

A special thank you to this week’s illustrator, Maria Hahne². See more of her work here.

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1. Samara Breger is a writer and performer from New York. Her novel, A Long Time Dead, has been featured on multiple occasions in the New York Times as one of the best romance books of 2023. Shorter pieces have appeared in Autostraddle, Reactor, Hey Alma, and a few other places. In addition to writing, she likes musical improv, olympic weightlifting, and spending time with her wife and dog.

2. Maria Lyn Hahne is a Seattle-based illustrator, designer, and book artist.  Inspired by children’s literature, queer experiences, and creatures from the natural world, she strives to create art that moves past shame and pain and envisions an optimistic, colorful future. She also just really likes drawing dogs.