Is this an ADHD thing, or just a human thing? Adventurous eater as a child but a picky eater later in life?

Food Issues

For context, I’m 29!

For my entire childhood and into my early adulthood, I wasn’t a picky eater or a “chicken nugget kid.” Sure, I preferred cheese pizza to one with a lot of toppings, or buttered pasta over red sauce, but I wasn’t pretty much down to eat whatever was made for me without major complaints. I grew up in a family that ate pretty well, (lots of fish, chicken, complex carbs, vegetables) and while I didn’t necessarily LOVE eating a plateful of chard with halibut and quinoa, I didn’t have any issues. I LOVED sushi and raw fish and had steak tartare at a fancy restaurant a couple of times. The only thing I was staunchly against was mushrooms because I had an experience as a kid where I threw up shortly after eating them.

Fast forward to 29, and it’s taken a major turn. I don’t know exactly when it happened (it must have happened gradually) but I started to have a lot of issues with the foods I used to eat with no problem or even enjoy! I’ll go home for the holidays and my parents will take us out to sushi (because they knew it was one of my favorites growing up!) and it takes everything in me to swallow a piece of nigiri without gagging. It’s hard for me to consistently get vegetables/fruits in, and I’ll often end up setting a ton of them aside due to small differences in tastes and textures (again, never had an issue with that.) I can still manage to eat whatever is given to me if I’m a guest somewhere or at a restaurant but sometimes it’s a battle. I find myself often defaulting to the foods a picky kid will like when I’m at home cooking for myself. Mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, simple rice bowls, etc.

Is this a common occurrence? Can anybody relate? Does anybody have any tips to regain my tastes for different foods? Or even just get in enough nutrients outside of multivitamins? It’s also a bit hard because I’m financially in a rough spot right now so it’s hard for me to pick the healthier foods that I DO still like to eat (for example, cherries! Why are they so expensive!) I do buy frozen veggies, but I’ll often let them just sit until they turn into a block of ice because they’re just so deeply unappealing to me. My best bet at getting my veggies in lately has been eating directly out of a bag of raw spinach while I cook whatever food I ACTUALLY want to eat, because it doesn’t require preparation for something I’m not really going to even enjoy.

Posted Jun 8, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

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