Find some vine ripened cherry or grape tomatoes from the local farmer’s market during the early/mid summer (or grow your own – there’s something incredibly satisfying about growing tomato plants, as they grow so large and so quickly). These will be incredibly sweet and berry-like compared to your standard grocery store beefsteak or plum tomato.

If you can handle eating those, you can, potentially, gradually work your way toward gradually less flavourful tomatoes, recontextualizing them as boring berries rather than slimy vegetables. If you can’t, you can start researching believable and sympathetic excuses that don’t make people give you Spock eyes.

I hate all of my food aversions. It’s embarrassing to be an adult and to be a picky eater. I also would really like to be a vegan for ethical reasons, but when I tried I realized that I don’t eat vegetables regularly enough for that be healthy.

It’s something I’ve worked really hard on and made some gains. Raw greens are okay, some cooked ones. But still, most cooked veggies are impossible for me. I really offended an ex boyfriend once because I gagged when I tried his soup. Sometimes when I’m stressed I regress. Sometimes even my complete last ditch safe foods (shit like Lunchables) don’t work either and I’ll go to sleep hungry.

Recently Facebook decided to feed me a bunch of content on ARFID, where it’s fucking boomers in the comments with the “they’ll eat it if they get hungry enough.” The classic “it’s your breakfast tomorrow.” I can’t really eat leftovers because of that shit - getting the same bowl of canned spinach three days in a row, that combination of being really fucking hungry while smelling the foulest thing imaginable.

It makes me want to punch someone in the face. There’s no fucking reason to do that to kids. So much of boomer parenting is wrapped up in this fucked up need for dictatorial control.

I’m a grown adult who will sometimes not eat for two days because my stomach decides everything is unsafe. I have lots of coping strategies from a lifetime of dealing with this, and I still couldn’t eat a tomato. Ketchup upsets and disturbs me more than human shit does - I’ve had a panic attack from a packet squirting on me.

I actively don’t want this to be the case. I would love to be able to get really into things like heirloom tomatoes, or try all kinds of fun soups. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a good kid and eat my dinner, but I just fucking couldn’t.

It’s a thing that is wrapped up endlessly in shame and embarrassment, and then on top of it all, people tell you it’s a choice to be this way. People are so shitty about something that has absolutely no impact on them.