Understanding the experience of eating for those with ASD

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I think we Aspies eat like we live. We come to obsess on a small group of foods and then stick about them. I think we tend to loosen up a bit as we get older. I would hardly eat fruit or vegetables until my early teens, for example. I still don't eat fruit, but will eat any vegetable now. Texture of food is a major thing for us. I can't take the soft texture of many fruits, for example. The texture of Bananas are disgusting to me, for instance, though the actual flavour of banana is not.

I don't have perfect control over what I eat, as I still live at home, but I like to eat the same thing every day. Egg salad sandwich for breakfast, pasta with cucumbers for lunch, and a dinner of white rice with fried broccoli and vegetarian chicken. I would be very happy to eat that way daily, and I do when I can, but my family likes variety and I'm a very lazy creature when it comes to food, so I won't cook for myself. As a result, I do often eat outside of that menu, but there's a very long list of foods I won't eat and the rules surrounding what I will eat are extensive, a few prominent examples being:
- I prefer to eat in groups of three (which is OCD-driven, I believe)
- I gag on bright colors
- I can't eat untoasted bread or foods of that texture
- Sugar makes me feel awful
- Regarding the foods I do eat, I can only stand certain brands
- I won't eat any food that is prepared by someone other than my mom or myself
My food issues were much worse when I was younger. I would only eat beige-colored foods and at one point refused to eat anything other than cheerios. I ended up underweight and my growth was stunted, but I "got over it" around the time I was eleven or twelve. I'm still on the verge of being underweight, but my diet is healthy and I have more variety than ever before.