By Azuka Onwuka
One challenge many parents have is coping with children that are picky of the foods they eat. For the parent who does the cooking, it is frustrating to prepare one type of meal for the family and then prepare another meal for a child or two who won’t eat that particular meal because it makes them want to vomit. For some children, that food type may be fish, beans, salad, onion, scrambled egg, etc. It is not that the children in question don’t like to eat that particular food item. It is just that once it goes into their mouth, they feel nauseous. It is may the smell, taste, look or feel of the food item.
It should be noted that this is not necessarily an eating disorder like the Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), oftentimes described as “extreme picky eating.” The fear in children with ARFID usually may stem from knowing they must eat even when they have no interest in eating, that they will choke or become sick, that they are faced with a new food, or that the temperature might not be what they like. Parents of children with eating disorders should see medical help.
However, for parents who don’t understand this picky eating challenge in their children, they may assume that the children are acting like spoilt brats who have too much food available and, therefore, can afford to be choosy. Many of such parents or guardians try to force such meals down the throats of the children. They use the whip, threats and force. They believe that with force, they can wipe out such a trait from the children.
But it is a wrong approach. A child who is repulsed by the taste of scrambled egg or the smell of fresh fish or seafood, for example, can never stop feeling so because of beating or threats. Such children will rather develop fear for their parents or food.
As a child, I had such an eating challenge. But I was lucky to have parents who understood my condition and managed it well. Interestingly they were not the well educated type. I was later to learn that my father had such a challenge too as a child.
Looking back now, I fully believe that my food challenge was so bad it would be frustrating for many parents to condone it. I loved food. I loved to eat. But among the staples of my Southeastern people, I only ate three staple foods: rice, yam and beans. I also ate some meals that were not considered as mainstream meals like bread and tea, pap, plantain and sweet potatoes. But all meals like pounded yam, akpụ, semovita, and pounded cocoyam dipped in soup and swallowed were no-go areas for me. I garri – I would regularly chew it mixed with sugar or pour it in cool water and drink it. But the moment it went through hot water and was to be swallowed dipped in soup, it became a forbidden food for me. I would eat yam if boiled or fried but the moment it was pounded and meant to be swallowed with soup, I would not touch it.
Any time people heard that, they would regard me as a Westernised, pampered child from rich parents. But if I told them I also did not eat salad, scrambled or fried eggs, fried rice, meat pie, hamburger, pizza, fresh fish, goat meat, noodles, spaghetti, and the like, they would call me a bush boy from a special kind of jungle. I would eat boiled eggs with glee but would not touch them once scrambled. I would eat frozen fish (which was considered of low class) but would not stand the smell of fresh fish (rated as high class).
For me to eat a meat pie, I would remove all the fillings and eat only the baked flour. If the popular boiled yam mixed with vegetables was prepared, I would remove all the vegetables and other ingredients, and even wash the yam with water before eating it. Alternatively, my mother would boil the yam, take out my portion before mixing the rest with oil, vegetables and other ingredients.
Furthermore, I could not swallow any medicine in tablet form. And as a child, I suffered malaria regularly. My AA genotype was said to be a factor that predisposed me to that. The prevailing and commonest malaria drug then was chloroquine. I considered bitter leaf a “learner” in comparison to the taste of chloroquine. But because I could not swallow any tablet, the chloroquine tablet had to be crushed into powder, then mixed with water for me to drink. Most times I would beg to be given the injection rather than take the tablets. I was also allergic to chloroquine, as the itching on my body was unbearable for two days with no sleep at night. Therefore, it was horror from two sides.
In addition, any time a goat was slaughtered in our house, especially during Christmas or Easter, I would not eat any food or soup cooked with the meat. The smell of the goat meat made me nauseous, not to talk of the taste. It was usually a depressing period for me, as others would be in celebratory mood while I would be in a sad mood, since virtually all the meals were prepared with the goat meat. It was only after about a week, after the meat had been dried over fire, that I would be able to eat the meat. Sometimes my mother would have to kill a chicken for me or buy some beef for me to eat during the festive season.
If I had to spend some weeks during the holidays at the home of a relative, my father would first have to explain to the person about my eating challenge. He would also give me some money to hold in case I needed to buy something to eat if a meal was one I could not eat.
By the time I went into the university, I had started swallowing some things like medicines in tablet form. I could also eat well-boiled vegetables. And by the time I was out of the university I had started eating most things. By the time I was 30, nothing edible was impossible for me to eat. Today if I notice that human beings eat something (excluding things like cockroaches, scorpions, snakes, rats, beetle larvae, octopus, human urine), I would try to eat it. The irony is that most of those people who were much better than me when we were kids cannot compete with me today as regards things I can taste. My father who had such a challenge as a child could also eat most things as an adult.
Our first son is like me when I was little but not as bad as I was. Because I went through worse things, I understand him and know he will get out of it. I know I can’t use force to stop him. My wife and I know what he can’t eat and try to see that he does not eat what he can’t take.
It is one thing parents need to understand about their children. If a child prefers not to eat beans because other children say negative things about it, that is a different thing from the case of a child who hates the smell and taste of fish and can’t get a morsel of it down the throat. The child is not doing it by choice. The child cannot be forced to change. The child will grow out of it. It is just a matter of time.
• Onwuka is a newspaper columnist and author.