defective food- need insight and options

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My daughter is becoming increasingly obsessed with the "condition" of her food.

What she is willing to eat is very limited to begin with, and now of the things she WILL eat, she eliminates anything "defective".

So for example, if a banana has a bruise she has (over the course of the past couple months) gone from 1) just eating it to 2) wanting the bruise shaved off to 3) wanting the entire section of banana with the bruise excised completely to 4) becoming utterly paranoid of the entire banana and my intentions behind trying to convince her it's ok to eat ANY of it. This was not something I facilitated. If a bruise was really bad, yeah I'd shave off the worst of it same as I would for myself. She is going these extra steps herself.

This was limited to healthy foods, like grapes, strawberries, etc... but is now extending into everything. Over the weekend she threw a fit over a perfectly roasted smore. The outside of the marshmallow became a lovely golden brown. Really perfect.... to us. Not to her. To her, it was ruined. Meltdown ensued. IF she rejects 70% of a pile of grapes I don't give her more and I don't give her another snack later. I'm not sure what else to do or how to curb this behavior.

Sounds anxiety-related. Will she eat the food if you eat some of it first to show it's not harmful? DS is paranoid about milk, and I often have to drink a little to prove that it's really, truly fine.

Take her to a psychologist?

Its one thing to be obesssive/anxious about items but food obsession/anxiety itself can be critically harmful if this is not 'cured' early. Harmful because it will affect her nutrition not only now as she grows up (I'm assuming she's under 10 given how you describe the situation) but also as an adult.

Is the bruise thing germ-related? She might think it's going to make her sick.

How old is she?

We have this issue also, It is getting better, especially over the last couple of years. My son wants everything, even food, to be perfect; but this has lessened as his food tolerances have increased, in general.

We let him pick the bread loaves (slices have to be perfectly square) and bananas (no bruises) It helps b/c he has ownership, and can see that despite the best intentions, food is not going to look perfect.

If social stories work for you, you could try that. Things in nature are not perfect, Things manufactured or assembled by people have flaws. Machine made things have tolerances. etc. This has been an ongoing series of lessons, that take awhile to sink in.

In the short run, you can slice fruits before she sees them. This will not help desensitize, but will help get her fed in the short run when you just have to get it done.

How old is she?

In my experience, most kids go through some version of this, and for most it will prove to just be a phase. I spent a few years giving into it for each child (my NT daughter was actually worse than my ASD son), and then it had passed.

Honestly, unless she is much too old for this I wouldn't worry about it. I know it is difficult and frustrating, but it SHOULD be just a phase. A perfectly normal one.

My 4yr has the same issue. If a cracker has a corner broken or an almond has the tip broken off he won't eat it. He won't eat any chips that have flavor on them either. I am sure he wouldn't eat bruised fruit, but since he will only eat things that are crunchy I couldn't prove that. He actually will go farther and cares about shape. He like Gardetto's but won't eat the squiggly bread sticks, just the straight ones. Working on his food issues is an upcoming but dreaded ABA program, novel foods.

We have tried food rotation, offering novel foods 15 times, even starving him out. To be fair the starving only lasted 2/3 day, it was clear to me it wasn't going to work and he was hungry and didn't know why we were starving him. I thought it was cruel and pointless. Later I heard of ASD parents who really tried it and there kids just didn't eat.

Good luck and let me know if something works.