There were rules, and I had a pocket
When I was in my early years of primary school, I had lunch with a nanny. She was very strict about finishing everything on our plates. Leaving food was not allowed.
I hated meat. I wasn’t a fan of the taste, but I also couldn’t tolerate the texture. It felt wrong in my mouth. Chewy, fibrous, unpredictable. But saying “I don’t want to eat this” was not an option.
So I found another solution.
I pretended to eat the meat and quietly put it in my pocket when no one was looking at me. I don’t remember deciding to do this. It just… happened. It was the only way to end the situation.
Sometimes I forgot to throw it away later. My mother would then find strange things in my pockets when doing the laundry.
What I find interesting today is not so much the trick itself, but the fact that another child noticed what I was doing and never reported it. The nanny never knew. Only 25 years later did that (grown-up) child mention it to my mother.
At the time, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I wasn’t trying to cheat. I was trying to survive lunch.
Texture is not a preference
For a long time, I thought this was just a funny childhood story.
When I learned more about autism and sensory differences, I realised something important: for some people, texture is not a preference. It’s a limit.
Meat was not “a food I didn’t like”. It was something my body couldn’t process comfortably.
As a child, I didn’t have the words for that. I couldn’t explain why it was unbearable. I only knew that it was.
When refusal is not allowed, the body still finds a way.
Putting food in my pocket wasn’t misbehaviour. It was a workaround.
Becoming vegetarian (or so I thought)
Many years later, as an adult, I mostly became a vegetarian, and I describe myself as a flexitarian.
At the time, I explained it to myself in moral terms. Respect for animal life. Ethics. It made sense, and it was true: those values are important to me.
For a long time, I thought this was the reason. Case closed.
But looking back, I think something else was already there. The sensory boundary existed long before the ethical explanation.
Ethics didn’t replace the boundary. They gave it language.
The brain hates empty boxes
There’s something my brain does a lot: it explains things after they’ve already happened.
For years, I believed I disliked meat because it got stuck in my teeth. Later, I thought it was mainly an ethical choice.
These explanations weren’t a lie, they were just… incomplete.
I now think this happens because I have difficulty identifying bodily and emotional signals in real time (something called alexithymia). When the signal is unclear, the brain doesn’t leave the reason blank. It fills it with something plausible (and usually socially acceptable).
It’s like the brain saying: “I don’t know exactly why this feels wrong, but here is a reason that makes sense.“
The behaviour comes first. The explanation catches up later.
Same strategy, different version
Even today, if I’m invited somewhere and the host cooks meat, I’ll usually eat it. I don’t want to impose rules on others.
But I still adapt.
I always take a bite of meat together with salad or fries. The texture changes. It becomes manageable.
When I realised this, it made me smile.
As a child, I hid meat in my pocket.
As an adult, I mix it with other textures.
Same logic.
Better interface.
Quiet adaptation
I notice a pattern here that goes beyond food.
I tend to adapt quietly. I don’t confront. I don’t explain. I find a way around the problem that keeps things running smoothly for everyone, including me.
As a child, that meant pockets.
As an adult, that means texture mixing, polite compromises, and not making a big deal out of it.
This isn’t about being dishonest.
It’s about preserving autonomy without creating conflict.
Food, control, and long shadows
I don’t think forced eating is harmless, even when it’s done with good intentions.
When a child learns that their bodily “no” doesn’t matter, they don’t suddenly stop having limits. They just stop expressing them.
Sometimes, those limits resurface much later, in strange ways. In my experience, I didn’t develop disordered eating habits; instead, I adopted selective eating that matches what my body can comfortably handle. That seems like a healthy solution.
Same boundary, new words
Looking back, nothing about my relationship with food suddenly changed.
The boundary was always there.
What changed was my understanding of it.
As a child, I protected myself without words.
Now, I finally have some.
What I once thought were changing reasons were actually the same truth, translated over time.
Same boundary. New language. Better fit.
Leave a Reply