I get asked this question a lot:
Is Picky Eating a Phobia?
I know I have expressed this opinion before. It may be a very unpopular one…especially for people who don’t like to let go of control in their lives and insist that they can change this thing in their life too…if only they could figure out how. Attributing this disorder to a phobia is a popular notion to take. But look at the definition of phobia:
A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.
At first read, this seems an accurate enough description of what many of us have. But look further into this. It is an irrational fear of a specific thing. We all say food right? Wrong…I don’t think too many of us are genuinly afraid of food. In fact we all eat some foods, and therefore we cannot be afraid of food in general. Ok…so we have thousands of phobias then…I have broccoli phobia, corn phobia, vegetable phobia. No, none of these generalizations or specifics will work either. I am perfectly fine being in the vicinity of these items. Most of us have no problem watching other people eat these things. I may not like the look or smell of some things, but I am not afraid of them. So what is the fear? Is it a fear of new things? Well, no, not new things in general. As has been stated most of us are extremely talented and smart, meaning we have had to take on new things and get good at them. Ok…so then a fear of new foods? Maybe! But unlikely because most of us can chain foods to some extent, very very very slowly adding a food here or there. Some are more extreme than others of course, but I don’t think the grand majority falls into this category of simply fearing new foods. Ok, well what else is left? Perhaps it is a fear of how others will react? No, because again, the vast majority of us started this “behavior” at a very young age…prior to our own memory. A 1 year old is not afraid of how people will react to trying new foods. A 1 year old is still completely self-centered. Well what then…if we do have a phobia, what is it? The only logical thing left is that we are afraid of what will happen when we put that food in our mouth. Since most of us have experienced that gut wrenching gagging and vomiting that results in an offensive item entering our mouth, this would be logical. But then, is that really an irrational fear. A fear of something we know might very well happen. Certainly throwing up is not dangerous, but then it is highly unpleasant and it certainly isn’t how a “normal” person reacts when trying new foods. So I think it would be incredibly wrong to say the fear is irrational. It is quite logical in fact given that I don’t know anyone who actually enjoys throwing up and/or gagging. And even if you can argue that it is indeed a phobia, it most certainly was not the original issue here. It would be most unlikely that a 1 year old has a fear of throwing up if and only if new foods are introduced. If the phobia exsisted for that child, it would more likely pertain to all food and would then refuse to eat.
I think people too quickly forget that for most of us, this started at infancy. And while infants can develop psychological problems, there would have to be some pretty specific things going on for a psychological problem of this capacity to be happening. As no one has been able to come up with any sort of tie to this effect, it is fairly safe to say that it is unlikely. However a large number of us can come up with at least one other person in our family who has this same sort of eating issue. Most of the time it is on a different scale, so one is more extreme than the other. But it would suggest largely that genetic involvement is completely and totally logical in these cases. In my case, my grandpa, my dad, a cousin on my dads side, and my brother are all affected with this disorder to different degrees. In every case, there is a normal eating child present too that has been raised by the same parents and not had the selective eating issues or if they had them, have outgrown them.
Beyond that still is the fact that psychological problems go way beyong environment and nurturing. Many psychological problems are genetic as well. Babies are born alcoholics even if no drop of alcohol has ever entered their blood stream. Addictive behavior is passed on through the genes from generation to generation. OCD is genetic. Depression is often times genetic. I would honestly go so far as to say that unless your parents abused you from infancy, if your eating disorder started before you started school, it is genetic…either a defect or a hereditary gene. Otherwise, we’d all just be able to do behavior modification therapy and kick this thing to the curb. But having been in cognitive therapy for 10 years now, no such thing has happened.
