14/08/2025
Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, more commonly known as ARFID, is a condition characterised by the person avoiding certain foods or types of food, having restricted intake in terms of overall amount eaten, or both.
Anyone of any age can have ARFID. It occurs in children, teenagers and adults. Although people with ARFID may lose weight or have low weight, this is not a criteria for ARFID. It can occur at any weight and varies in different people.
Someone might be avoiding and/or restricting their food for a number of different reasons. The most common are the following three reasons. You might see these referred to as subtypes of ARFID:
• They might be very sensitive to the taste, texture, smell, or appearance of certain types of food, or only able to eat foods at a certain temperature.
• They may have had a distressing experience with food, such as choking or vomiting, or experiencing significant abdominal pain. Some people may experience more general worries about the consequences of eating that they find hard to put into words, and restrict their intake to what they regard as ‘safe’ foods.
• In some cases, the person may not recognise that they are hungry in the way that others would, or they may generally have a poor appetite. For them, eating might seem a chore and not something that is enjoyed, resulting in them struggling to eat enough.
It is very important to recognise that any one person can have one or more of these reasons behind their avoidance or restriction of food and eating at any one time. In other words, these examples are not mutually exclusive. And sometimes, there is no clear reason or event that has led to someone developing ARFID. This means that ARFID might look quite different in one person compared to another. Because of this, ARFID is sometimes described as an ‘umbrella’ term – it includes a range of different types of difficulty. Nevertheless, all people who develop ARFID share the central feature of the presence of avoidance or restriction of food intake in terms of overall amount, range of foods eaten, or both.
ARFID can be present on its own, or it can co-occur with other conditions; those most commonly co-occurring with ARFID are anxiety disorders, autism, ADHD and a range of medical conditions.
The eating difficulties someone with ARFID has, can have been present for a very long time, in some cases almost as long as they can remember. In other people, it might have a more recent onset.
Our team of therapists, dietitians and nutritionists are here to help and support the person with ARFID and the wider family.
01372 377320
info@thesurreycentre.com
surreycentreforeatingdisorders.com
