ADHD/Autism and Food
Here I am in Italy, the land of pasta, cheese, olives, lots of meat, and anything and everything that can be pulled out of the sea. A gastronomic delight. But I am ADHD and autistic with all the food related sensitivities and atypical interoception. Red meat is out as my body has never liked it. I am dairy intolerant (not lactose intolerant) and miss out on all the lovely cheeses. The structure of various foods such as squid, shellfish, and fungi is unacceptable to my body. After a lifetime of yearly checking, I still have not developed a liking of olives. And I cannot tell when I have had enough to eat. Combine all that with impulsivity and feeding yourself healthily becomes very difficult.
Exteroceptive hypersensitivity (being extremely sensitive to external stimuli) affects how we eat. For me the smell of bacon is enough to stop me eating. Pork in general is bad, but bacon is the worst. The sensation of eating raw oysters or biting down on mussels can be abhorrent to anyone with a sensitivity to textures (it definitely is to me). Smell, sight, texture, taste, they can all be reasons why an ADHD or autistic person cannot (and I stress ‘cannot’) eat certain foods. Some of us cannot eat around others as the sound of eating or the sight of others eating stops us being able to eat. Add a tendency to food intolerances and the chances of nutritional imbalances are enormous.
As a teenager I was borderline anorexic. In a day I would eat one slice of bread for breakfast (with the ubiquitous ‘hagelslag’ on it) and half a potato in the evening with some veg and some gravy. That was it apart from coffee with a spoon full of sugar to keep my blood sugar levels up. Eating disorders are common in ADHD and autistic people. Our exteroceptive hypersensitivities cause us to struggle with a lot of food. Our interoceptive differences make us not know when we are hungry or not know when we are full.
We avoid eating when the food doesn’t look, smell, or taste right for us. We binge eat to regulate our emotions or to calm or stimulate our sensory needs, Most of us have no idea why we do this. We cannot necessarily trust our internal bodily cues as they may tell us we are not hungry (when we are) or are still hungry (when we are not). Autistic people are more likely to avoid eating or to restrict what they eat. ADHDers tend to have a wider set of disordered eating behaviours, including the binge eating I mentioned earlier.
ADHD and autism are genetic and part of this genetic difference includes differences in the nutrition we need. And yet there is very little information available regarding this. When I was approached by Jennifer Moon regarding pre-reading her new book Nutrition for ADHD, I was therefore delighted. I was even more delighted when having a closer look at the book, as she divided her recipes into three categories, depending on how much energy you have (or how many spoons) at any given time. For me the energy I have tells me whether to have beans on toast or to spend half an hour preparing a lovely nutritious and tasty meal.
I have no idea where I was going with this and therefore have no firm conclusion to give you. I will taper off into silence instead…..
Warm wishes,
Anita
Further reading:
Investigation of associations between self-reported sensory processing, eating disorder symptoms, neurodivergence, and gender congruence from a lived experience lens
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40337-026-01551-8
The role of interoception in the overlap between eating disorders and autism: Methodological considerations
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40337-026-01551-8
A closer look at the role of nutrition in children and adults with ADHD and neurodivergence
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2025.1586925/full
