THE SENSORY MADE SIMPLE PODCAST

Transcript

Welcome to episode 11 of the Food Explorers Podcast.

Today we have an extra special guest who is finally, finally feeling better after being sick last week.

So I'm excited to welcome my husband JR onto the podcast.

For those of you who don't know, JR describes himself as being a more selective eater, especially when it comes to fruits.

So I wanted to bring him on here so you could understand what it feels like from your child's viewpoint.

So welcome JR.

Hey, everyone.

And JR has been absolutely very excited to get on the podcast from the moment I started talking about it.

I know, I'm sorry I was sick last week and missed the opportunity, but thanks for having me.

So let me know what you guys think of having him here.

I'd love to bring him back a little more often if you guys enjoy it too.

So JR the big reason I wanted to bring you on here was to talk about fruit specifically.

So can you share with our listeners a little bit about what your relationship with fruit is now as an adult?

I would say it's complicated.

Brutes are not a food that I ever really ate, and I certainly don't really seem to like them as an adult.

So even as a kid, you didn't really eat fruit?

No, I actually didn't even eat vegetables either growing up.

So I like stuck to the staples of chicken fingers, French fries, hot dogs, pizza, mac and cheese.

And those were kind of like my five core food groups.

Beyond that, it took a long time to even try any type of vegetable.

And then up until even like in adulthood, I would say like to really get better at some of the food variety I have now.

But as I know you today, you actually eat an entire array of vegetables.

For the most part, I can put any vegetable on your plate with some strategies and you will eat them.

There's some that I like more than others for sure.

But I've kind of come to terms with, this is good for me to eat well-rounded foods, to eat healthier food certainly.

And I wouldn't necessarily classify myself today as a picky eater, but certainly like growing up, it would have been something that I was described as a lot, even up until my adult years.

And as an adult, and even as a kid, how did it make you feel to hear people classify you as that, or to hear people today classify you as that?

So it never bothered me like the term picky eater or anything like that, or selective eater.

You know, I was, right?

I mean, like it was the reality, like I didn't have a lot of foods that I really ate.

Sometimes it was a little bit more difficult than others, just because you can get judged, certainly even like as an adult, if like, you know, you don't have this palette that accepts all sorts of different foods and varieties, and you're not open to going to different restaurants and things like that.

So like, it can be filled with some pressure.

I still get weird looks from like my family when they're like, what do you mean you don't eat fruit?

It's like, you know this, I never ate fruit.

And like, I remember once for my birthday, they got me this like strawberry cake thing.

And I just like looked at it, and I was like, that's nice, but didn't ever take a bite.

And it was like surprising to them after, you know, all these years, but so yeah, sometimes it's a little weird.

There's definitely been a lot of dinners we've been to where you've turned down dessert because there's been fruit on it.

And I think it always surprises everybody because you love dessert.

Oh yeah, like it kills me when someone serves like a chocolate cake, but then they put like fruit on it, or like a fruit dressing or sauce on it.

I'm like, why would you ruin a delicious chocolate cake with that?

And you know, I'll do the like maybe, maybe if I'm like really craving the dessert, like pick around it.

But a lot of times, like especially if they put like a fruit sauce or fruit all over it, I just, I just will eat dessert at home or just not eat dessert that day.

So it totally ruins the dessert for you.

It can, I mean, it, you know, it definitely takes the wind out of my sails when I see a dessert and it's got fruit on it, compared to just like a delicious, like love chocolate, obviously, or something like that.

But yeah, the fruit on a plate isn't something I typically go for and usually will avoid eating it.

So I do want to point out, though, that since I've known you, and it sounds like since you've been a kid, you've made a lot of progress with eating different foods, especially when it comes to vegetables, and I think fish, proteins, things like that.

So what things and what strategies do you think have helped you over the years?

So like going back to the very beginning, when I didn't eat any kind of fruit or any kind of vegetable, I mean, we're talking like seriously, those five foods were basically what I ate, you know, add in chips or something here or there.

I remember the first thing, like my parents, like the memory I have is like, the first thing my parents like really wanted me to eat or try was like carrots.

And I don't know why, but they were super obsessed with like eating just like plain raw carrots, not even cooked in a dish, just like carrots on the side of like mac and cheese, carrots on the side of a hot dog, carrots on the side of pizza, whatever the comfort food was.

And I would never eat them.

Or like if I did, I would like gag and spit them up and spit them into a napkin, like hated them.

I always ate peanut butter sandwiches growing up, not peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which was weird to some, but PB sandwiches.

And so I guess at one point, one of the strategies they tried was, they coated carrots in peanut butter, right?

I mean, or they'd give me like carrots with a side of peanut butter, and I would kind of dip the carrots in.

And I could kind of like dip a carrot in peanut butter, eat that, and then like maybe take a big gulp of water and like get the carrot down.

And that was like one strategy that worked, because then slowly I started eating like carrots.

Carrots are kind of probably one of the first real vegetables I ate.

Another thing they tried too was, and maybe like piggybacking off of like the comfort food thing was, say I had French fries or something, I might dip them in ranch.

And so I remember like they wanted me to eat salads as a kid.

So just lettuce, like nothing else on it, or maybe lettuce with carrots, like if they were really pushing it and trying to be adventurous, but then like they would serve it with like ranch or something that was maybe comfortable or familiar, because hey, I liked it anyway with French fries, so maybe it made sense on a salad.

And like I said, it took many years to eat the full bowl of salad or the whole plate of carrots, not a whole plate, side of carrots.

But those are some of the strategies, at least as a kid.

And those are actually, those are great strategies.

So you're definitely a dip person, and you will eat a lot of things when a dip is offered on the side.

At Pizza Carousel, your favorite thing is having the marinara sauce as a dip.

But for all the parents out there, dips are actually a great strategy for helping kids learn new foods, because it is a food that they are more comfortable with, and pairing it with an uncomfortable food helps kind of mask that flavor a little bit and make it feel a little bit more appetizing for them.

Now, I know a lot of you might already be thinking, my kid doesn't like dips.

It's something good to start working towards if you can, because dips can be very, very helpful at the table.

One thing I'll say too, and like this is just having kind of, having learned from you, is they were definitely heavy handed with like the quantity.

So like a side of carrots was like not two carrots, right?

It was a lot of carrots, like half of a bag of carrots, or a giant bowl of lettuce, right?

When we were trying to give it to eat salads.

So the quantities were in huge portions.

And I think that too was like, they realized like, hey, I'm not eating vegetables.

So then they overcompensated and put way too much on my plate.

And then I didn't eat vegetables because one, I didn't like them and two, there was like tons of them.

So that was also something.

And even today, I think you still sometimes get a little mad at me when I overdo it on the veggies too, give you a really big serving.

Sometimes it's like, I get it, we're trying to be healthy, but whoa, you know, slow down there.

Another really great strategy that JR has me do that I wanna point out is, you asked me to cut veggies really small.

A lot of times the ones that you don't like, because it blends into the food a little better and you don't notice it as much.

Yeah, and I think too, like as you kind of get older and more mature and realize like there are certain foods you should be eating that are rich in antioxidants or healthier or good for this or good for that.

Like you wanna get those foods in whether you like them or not.

And so it then becomes like, all right, well, can I eat something like a salsa which has a bunch of different vegetables in it or something like really chopped fine vegetables because then I can just kinda get it all in one bite with something I like and not really notice they're there as much.

How can I learn to eat this food?

So I'd also like for parents to understand how their child might be feeling in their actual body when confronting an uncomfortable food.

So can you explain a little bit how things feel in your body when you are looking at or interacting with a fruit?

And I'm actually gonna piggyback on this a little bit.

Let's talk about bananas.

Because bananas are a food that JR actually very much has an aversion to.

So even the banana being in the room next to us, if I have one, if I eat one, or even, I mean, I can see him right now like visually uncomfortable as we talk about it.

Of all the fruits to bring up right out of the gate, bananas are definitely the one that's like my kryptonite.

I cannot stand bananas.

Will never eat anything with like bananas in them, near them, having even been on a truck with them when they shipped from the farm, right?

Like I don't want to be anywhere near or have anything to do with bananas.

And that goes back a long, long time.

I don't know, the smell just always made me super nauseous, made me like want to gag.

Just like the texture of a banana like kind of like freaks me out in a weird way.

I know that sounds weird.

I actually had a job at one point when I was younger working at an ice cream shop.

And one day a customer came in, I was the only one working, and he ordered a banana split.

And I had like never touched a banana as an adult.

And I just kind of like put the whole banana, like peel and everything on the ice cream and gave it to him.

And of course I got like a dirty look of like, you know, that's not a banana split and whatever.

And I was just like, you know, sorry, but I'm not, I'm not the guy to do that.

I'm not, yeah, I don't like bananas, right?

And my boss got mad at me and the whole thing.

But yeah, to this day, I mean, even just like having a banana peel in the garbage, the smell of it just overwhelms me, makes me nauseous, makes me like visibly gag.

I have a very strong aversion.

And we even, I mentioned to you earlier that when there's sometimes like a fruit that you don't like, I'll actually see your body shudder in response to it.

But you actually mentioned something too about becoming defensive when these things are near you.

Yeah, I mean, even like recently, I was at a work event.

We're all like sitting in the room on like our laptops and the guy next to me had a banana.

And I just like, you know, imagine just like giving someone a dirty look.

Like that was me with this banana that just sitting next to me, like harmless, not even open, but just, you know, it does kind of generate this like response that I'm not super proud of, but honestly, it just, it's so embedded in me that I really don't have like a way to control it.

So I don't like bananas at all.

That's definitely, like I said, kind of my kryptonite, but, you know, I guess we're working on it.

We're working on it.

We are always learning.

And so that's something really important to point out.

JR is a fully functioning adult, and he still can feel this.

He can still feel this come up in his body.

So sometimes as parents, you get really upset when your child responds in this way, but it really is biological.

It really is that fight or flight response kicking in.

And even as an adult, he feels it happening.

Yeah, and I can point out, like as a kid, I was never in a traumatic experience with a banana or anything.

I never had a fight with a banana or anything like that.

I wasn't ganged up on the dark alley and a bunch of bananas started attacking me.

I just never liked them.

The smell was always overpowering to me.

But it was also weird too, because I remember when I was younger, my mom would make banana bread.

If she just made banana bread, I wouldn't go anywhere near it, wouldn't touch it.

But for some, sometimes, and I guess she got smart, she would throw a ton of chocolate chips in it.

Almost to the point that you couldn't see that it was banana bread, that it was chocolate chip bread, essentially, at that point.

Well, you do love a good chocolate.

I do love a good chocolate, as we discussed.

And there were times that I'm embarrassed to admit, I ate the banana bread with all the chocolate chips.

More chocolate than banana.

But again, you come across one of those clumpy bites where it has that banana taste or texture or smell, and then I would like kind of gag even then.

So I really had to force it down.

And even to this day, now I don't even eat banana bread at all.

So in some areas, like I kind of just have gone backward on that.

But I think too, it is something that would be nice to not have like the same feeling that I get around them.

Although that's something that's always been difficult for me to control.

And so a lot of parents tell me that because their child is older, because they're a teen, or I've even spoken to some adults who say, oh, I'm an adult.

So I clearly can touch this food, and or my child can clearly touch this food.

And yet you and I both know that maybe that's not so accurate.

And here's a story I would love to talk about, where we went to something called The Girls by our house, which is kind of like a...

It's a farm.

Yeah, a farm, a farm where you can feed the animals.

And so they give you little cups with vegetables and fruits.

And so we're walking around, we're feeding the animals and everything's fine.

And then we're kind of at the bottom of the container, and it's like apples and oranges and strawberries.

And so we went over to feed the birds because those are the only ones that would eat that.

And I kept trying to get JR to feed the birds, and I was like, here, like feed them.

And he did not want to.

And finally, it dawned on me, I had never noticed this since we've been together, but it dawned on me that he didn't want to touch the fruit.

Yeah, and actually the little like plate of food they gave us to feed the birds and the animals like had, like you said, you know, carrots and oranges and apple and, you know, some other mixed veggies and I think corn, stuff like that.

Yeah, I'm like going for the corn or going for the carrots.

But as soon as those run out, I'm certainly not like, you know, fondling the apples or the oranges at the bottom that I do have this kind of like aversion to.

And so the reason I had probably never noticed this is because we really hadn't been in a situation where JR needed to touch a fruit.

It's not like it was on his plate.

He's an adult at this point.

He doesn't eat something if he doesn't want to.

He doesn't put himself in those situations.

So it was really the first time I had ever seen him in a place where that was or wasn't an option.

So my realization here too, and we've talked about this, I think it's like also something to do a lot with the texture, probably the smell too, but like wet fruits or like mushy fruits are definitely something I tend to avoid.

So if after like a meal or something that you cook and it's like a really great meal and I'm doing dishes, you know, any food that may be like wet or if there was like a fruit on your plate, certainly like one of the fruits that I described that was kind of like mushy or wet, like I usually won't even touch at all with my hands almost ever, like I'll use a fork to scrape it off or I'll grab like a napkin and kind of like smoosh it off with that or push it into the garbage can.

So that's something like especially, and we've even gotten into like little, you know, fun banters back and forth because, you know, sometimes we make French toast, you'll put blueberries on yours.

And you always get that one.

I don't always want to clean your plate that's covered in like blueberries.

Or when I accidentally mix them up.

Yeah, or when you accidentally mix them up, right?

So, you know, it definitely like affects you as an adult, which is kind of interesting.

But, you know, again, it's just, I think, me learning that, you know, I don't have to touch the fruit if I don't want to, I don't have to interact with it if I don't want to, but it is like sometimes something that feels like almost controlling over you.

And for those of you wondering why we have not made more progress in the fruits area, JR is an adult, so I do have to respect his autonomy to not want to work on fruits more.

And using a fork is a great strategy.

So it's not something to be embarrassed about.

If that's something that makes your child more comfortable interacting with that food, that's a great first step, because in the past, you didn't even want to touch my plate at all or be near it.

Yeah, and the thing I'll say to that too is like, yeah, obviously, I'm an adult, and I can kind of choose to engage with the food or not, but like, you know, fruits have always been that kind of like not really gonna happen food for me.

Vegetables were always like that for the longest time, but since I've known you, I can count probably dozens of like all sorts of new and weird vegetables that are in my diet, whether I know about them or not.

When we go to the grocery store, the cashier has to like bring over the manager and special people because they have no idea what kind of fruits and vegetables you buy.

Neither do I, all sorts of weird things, but tons of variety from that, things I've never even heard of before, never even thought of.

And it's always funny to see the cashier have to pull out like this special secret book and be like, what kind of item is this?

Or what kind of vegetable is this?

And you chop it up and mix it into the meal and the meal stays good.

So what JR is talking about is, I love going to the grocery store and finding the most random fruit or vegetable that I have never ate before.

And just trying it out, because I do like variety, I get bored, and I just like to try new fruits and vegetables.

And so I wanna go back a little bit to, you mentioned that you don't wanna touch the wet fruits and vegetables.

You've mentioned the smells of the fruits and vegetables.

We're actually gonna have you come back in a couple weeks and talk about sensory processing, because we've noticed that maybe that might be something that affects it for you, because even you said there wasn't a traumatic event that led you to this.

It's something that from a young age, you really struggle to eat these foods.

So we're gonna have you come back and talk about sensory processing, because sometimes that could be something that is holding a child back from kind of getting over those milestones with new foods.

Okay, so I have one more question for you.

If you were to sit down at the table, and I had put a banana or a pear on your plate and was trying to pressure you to eat it, how would you respond?

How would your body respond?

How would that make you feel?

I'd probably get super defensive.

I'd get up and maybe even go as far as storming away, just being angry.

And that's not necessarily your fault, but that would be if you kind of tried to force it on me.

Now it's one thing if we order food at a restaurant and they don't say that it comes with a side of fruit salad, then I'll just sort of push it off to the side and as far away from me as possible on the table and just kind of ignore it.

But it's totally a different feeling.

I think I would definitely get very defensive for sure if someone tried to force a fruit on me or force me to deal with that kind of emotion.

I think that was such a relatable answer because so many parents have seen that they've tried to pressure their kids to take a bite and they flee from the table.

They run away from the table because you want to get as far away from the situation as possible.

Yeah, I mean, and, you know, too, I mean, as adults, we're really just big kids.

So like, if you think about it, you know, that kind of reaction is, it's maybe not as like polished as a child, but like as an adult, like really, it's kind of, you know, fight or flight in a sense.

And you do have this emotional attachment to food, some positive and some negative.

And if it's a negative association, you're really gonna want to kind of run away from that, or at least, you know, act out and be far away from that thing that's triggering that response.

Yeah, and what I really want parents to realize is that it's not as calculated sometimes as it feels.

It can feel like a personal attack when you put all of this energy into making a food for your child, and that's the response.

But it really is biological.

And a lot of the times, it really is not something that they can control.

Luckily, as an adult, JR is very much able to control that and use his words, but sometimes kids can't do that.

Well, yeah, and actually, too, on the other side of it, trying to be more adventurous, there have been a few times, a few meals that I've been pleasantly surprised, where maybe it wasn't necessarily a fruit in just wet form, but a food or one of these unique vegetables or something that was incorporated into part of the meal or something that I wouldn't necessarily eat on its own, but would try it and be like, hey, this tastes pretty good.

And it's kind of interesting because I think that you're open with telling me what's in the food that I'm eating, and then it's sort of my choice to eat it or not, but still wanting to be adventurous and wanting to try new things, sometimes I surprise myself on what I actually like.

And I want to point out here, it's incorporating, we're not hiding, so I'm not intentionally trying to hide things from him, but we're incorporating it in.

So I think we've actually done this a couple of times recently.

We blended cottage cheese into eggs and baked them for breakfast, and you've actually kind of been enjoying those.

And then we also did yogurt, which is another food that JR is not the biggest fan of usually.

And I put it into a coleslaw for like a taco, and you actually really enjoyed that, which you surprised yourself because yogurt is one of those foods you tend to avoid.

Like I would never just like go and get like a cup or bowl of yogurt and eat that or cottage cheese.

Like I know a lot of people do, but I was kind of surprised that in the food, you know, it may be like met expectations or exceeded expectations that I didn't necessarily know I had that were preconceived of, hey, this is something you're not gonna like.

So, you know, it's been kind of like, one, obviously living with you and working with you through sort of this food journey, but then two, like also pushing myself as an adult a little bit to be like, hey, it's okay to try a new food and it's okay not to like a certain food, right?

Like I've tried a lot of the vegetables and stuff that you've served and I just haven't liked them or, you know, I favor some more than others.

And that's okay to have like an individual palate.

But it's also like exciting to be like, yeah, this was actually really good.

That had a good tang.

A perfect example is like avocados.

I never ate avocados growing up.

And then at some point in my life, I guess I tried like guac or something.

And now like you'll find me just in pretty much every format, like I'll order like sliced avocado on a turkey sandwich, or I'll get like guacamole or whatever, things that I would never have done before.

So, you know, you do kind of surprise yourself a bit when you're open to trying new foods, but certainly when it's not met with someone forcing it on you.

Absolutely.

Well, JR thank you for joining us.

I'm clearly gonna have to cut a lot of stuff out because you had me laughing quite a bit, but I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.

And JR.

I hope you had fun on your very first podcast with us.

It was very special.

Thank you very much for having me.