NUGGETS, CHIPS & THE ART OF NOT LOSING YOUR MIND AT MEALTIMES
A Neurodivergent Family's Guide to ARFID, Sensory Eating & Why Yes, The Brand of Nugget Absolutely Does Matter - By Andrea Grant | Neurodiversity Coach, Educator & Reluctant Connoisseur of the Chicken Nugget.
I need to open with a confession.
I am, at this point in my life, something of an expert on chicken nuggets. Not by choice. Not by training. But by sheer accumulated experience across more than a decade of mealtimes with neurodivergent children, I have developed a palate — a discernment, if you will — that would not be out of place in a very niche episode of MasterChef.
There are differences between nuggets, and those differences matter enormously. The coating. The density. The exact ratio of crisp to interior. Whether they were made from breast meat or processed meat or something that prefers not to be identified.
Whether they came from McDonald's or Woolworths or the freezer section of Pick n Pay. My children know. They have always known. And for a very long time, I sat with a group of fellow neurodivergent-parent friends — all of us clutching our wine — and collectively mourned the fact that our children's entire culinary universe appeared to consist of nuggets, chips, tomato sauce, and very specific Margherita pizza.
Specific Margherita pizza. Not just any Margherita. Certainly not — and I want to be absolutely clear about this — the kind with buffalo mozzarella and rocket leaves draped artistically across it like a salad that got lost. No. A particular brand, a particular ratio of cheese to base, a particular level of crispness, consistent every single time.
If you are reading this and nodding, you are my people. Welcome. Sit down. Have a nugget.
So What Is Actually Going On? Enter ARFID
For years, the medical and parenting establishment had a word for what our children were doing. That word was fussy. As in: "Oh, they're just fussy eaters." As in: "They'll eat when they're hungry." As in: the deeply unhelpful implication that you, the parent, have simply failed to be firm enough at mealtimes.
I cannot tell you how many times I sat across from a well-meaning relative, a GP, a nursery schoolteacher, or a stranger in a restaurant who watched my child refuse a meal and assumed I was running some kind of culinary democracy where children got to vote on every dish.
As if I hadn't tried. As if I hadn't spent years offering new foods, plating things attractively, hiding vegetables in sauces, cutting things into interesting shapes, bribing with dessert, pleading with my eyes, and eventually just putting the nuggets on.
The clinical reality is far more complex — and far more compassionate — than "fussy." ARFID — Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder — is a recognised feeding and eating disorder characterised by a persistent pattern of avoiding or restricting food intake that is not explained by cultural practices or a lack of food availability. It is not about body image. It is not about weight. It is about the food itself — the taste, the texture, the smell, the appearance, the temperature, and the deeply visceral sense of threat that certain foods trigger in certain nervous systems.
ARFID was officially added to the DSM-5 in 2013, which means that for the generations of neurodivergent children who struggled before that — and for their parents who were told to just try harder — there was not even a name for what they were experiencing. Just judgement. Just the slow erosion of every mealtime into a battlefield.
Research now consistently shows that ARFID occurs at significantly higher rates in autistic individuals than in the general population. A 2021 study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders found that between 17% and 54% of autistic children meet criteria for ARFID — compared to roughly 3.2% of the general paediatric population. The overlap is not coincidental. It is neurological.
The Sensory Reality of Eating
To understand why neurodivergent children eat the way they do, you have to understand what eating actually involves from a sensory perspective — because it is, when you think about it, an extraordinarily complex sensory event. Every mouthful of food involves simultaneous input across multiple sensory channels: taste, obviously, but also texture, temperature, smell, sound (yes — the crunch of food is a genuine sensory experience), the proprioceptive feedback of chewing, the interoceptive awareness of swallowing, and the visual appearance of the food before it even reaches the mouth.
For a nervous system that processes sensory information differently — more intensely, less predictably, with less filtering — any one of these channels can trigger a gag reflex, a panic response, or a complete refusal.
This is why the nugget works. It is predictable. It is consistent. The texture is known. The temperature is manageable. The taste is familiar. The sensory profile of that nugget has been mapped, processed, filed, and approved by a nervous system that requires exactly this level of certainty before it will permit food to enter the body. This is also why changing brands — even subtly — can cause what appears to the outside world to be a completely disproportionate reaction. It is not disproportionate. The nervous system encountered an unexpected sensory input where it was promised a known one. That is a genuine threat response, not a performance.
In our house, textures are everything. Olivia cannot tolerate food that is too wet — anything with an excess of liquid or sauce triggers immediate and absolute rejection. Soft, fatty meat is completely off the table. Fat in any visible form is a hard no. Meat on the bone — for Olivia and for me, honestly, because I refuse to get anything on my hands or nails — is simply not something that happens in our household.
Harrison, my son, was in a category entirely his own. For years, that child existed on a dietary profile so nutritionally void that he was essentially running on air, chicken derivatives, and sheer determination. Every supplement known to science went into that child. Iron. Zinc. Omega-3. A multivitamin so comprehensive it practically constituted a meal in itself. Because when your child will not eat vegetables, fruit, most proteins, anything green, anything with a sauce, anything that touches anything else on the plate — you supplement, and you do it without guilt, because you are doing what you can with what you have.
If your child's diet is severely restricted, please speak to your paediatrician about nutritional supplementation. It is not failure. It is pragmatism. Your child needs nutrients. Nuggets, it turns out, do not contain all of them.
The Judgement. Oh, The Judgement. Can we talk about this?
Because I think it needs to be said loudly and clearly: The judgment that neurodivergent families receive around food is breathtaking in its ignorance and its cruelty. I have watched parents of neurotypical children look at my child's plate with an expression that could only be described as pity mixed with disapproval.
I have sat through family dinners where well-meaning relatives made pointed comments about "children who know how to manipulate." I have had people suggest — with complete sincerity — that if I simply refused to provide the preferred foods, my child would eventually eat what was put in front of them. Let me be clear about what actually happens when you force a child with ARFID to eat a non-preferred food: they gag. They vomit. They have a meltdown of such intensity that it sets back their relationship with food by months. They learn that mealtimes are a site of trauma rather than nourishment. They do not, under any circumstances, develop a sudden appreciation for broccoli. The research is unambiguous on this. Forced feeding in children with sensory-based food avoidance does not work and causes measurable psychological harm.
A 2019 study in Appetite journal found that pressure-based feeding strategies in children with sensory food aversions were associated with increased food refusal, higher mealtime anxiety, and poorer long-term dietary outcomes. Your child is not manipulating you. They are not winning a power struggle. They are protecting their nervous system from a genuinely overwhelming experience, using the only tools available to them.
The Neuro-Affirming Approach to Expanding the Menu
Now — the part you actually came for. Because yes, nuggets are fine, but we would also quite like our children to eventually be able to eat something green without requiring a debrief from a trauma therapist afterwards. Here is what the research — and more than a decade of lived experience — tells us about food expansion for neurodivergent children:
Start with the safe food as the anchor. Never remove preferred foods from the plate. The safe food is not the enemy — it is the psychological security that makes it possible for a new food to be present at all.
A plate with nuggets AND something new is far less threatening than a plate with only something new. The nuggets stay. They are non-negotiable. They are the foundation.
Food chaining. This is a well-researched approach developed by feeding therapists that works by moving gradually from a preferred food to similar foods in tiny, incremental steps. If your child loves a specific brand of nugget, the next step might be a different brand of the same nugget. Then a different shape. Then a different protein with a similar coating. Then the same protein without the coating.
Each step is so small that the nervous system barely registers the change. Over months — and I do mean months, not days — the dietary repertoire expands.
Division of Responsibility (Ellyn Satter's model). The parent decides what food is offered, when, and where. The child decides whether to eat and how much.
This framework removes the power struggle from mealtimes entirely. You are not responsible for whether they eat it. You are responsible for offering it. That is all. When mealtimes stop being a battleground, the nervous system relaxes. A relaxed nervous system is more willing to try new things.
Sensory play with food — away from mealtimes.
Let children touch, smell, examine, and play with unfamiliar foods without any expectation of eating them. Familiarity reduces threat. A child who has spent three weeks handling cherry tomatoes, squishing them, smelling them, and using them as imaginary eyeballs in a game is significantly more likely to eventually put one in their mouth than a child who only ever encounters a tomato on a plate with the implicit demand to eat it.
Identify the sensory profile and work with it. If your child cannot tolerate wet textures, don't present food in sauces — serve components separately. If temperature is the issue, let food cool completely before serving. If it's the mixing of flavours, keep everything on the plate completely separate.
Work with the nervous system, not against it. Never make it a big deal. The single fastest way to entrench food refusal is to make every mealtime a high-stakes emotional event. Neutral responses to both trying and refusing. No praise so effusive it creates pressure, no disappointment so visible it creates shame.
Just: "There it is. You can try it if you like."
In South Africa, access to feeding therapists — occupational therapists who specialise in oral sensory processing and feeding — is growing, though still geographically limited. If you are in a major centre like Cape Town, Johannesburg, or Durban, ask your OT for a referral to a feeding specialist.
If you are not near a major centre, online feeding therapy is increasingly available and worth exploring.
A Note on Cucumber
Olivia eats pretty much anything I make now. From the age of around seven, something shifted and their dietary range expanded substantially — which does happen, and which I want you to hold onto as a source of genuine hope if you are currently in the nuggets-only phase. Harrison took longer. Harrison, bless him, tested every theory I had and several I hadn't thought of yet. But he got there. Slowly, incrementally, one food chain at a time.
And cucumber — plain, cold, unadorned cucumber — remains an approved food in our household. It appears on plates regularly. It is not questioned.
In the world of neurodivergent eating, cucumber is a triumph and I will not hear otherwise.
What I Want Other Parents to Know
Your child is not broken. Their relationship with food is not a reflection of your parenting. The judgement you receive from people who have never sat across from a child in a genuine sensory crisis over a piece of pasta is not informed opinion — it is ignorance, and you are not obliged to accept it. Feed your child what they will eat. Supplement where necessary. Introduce new foods slowly, without pressure, without drama.
Find a feeding therapist if you can. And join a community of parents who understand — because there is something profoundly relieving about sitting with people who also know the difference between a Woolworths nugget and a McDonald's one and why, in fact, it matters enormously. At www.parentingonthespectrum.co.
You've got this. Pass the nuggets.