Stacy Elise Sullivan

ARFID — or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder — is a fairly new addition to the modern parenting lexicon: a behavior far more severe than pickiness, it’s an eating disorder provoked not by the desire to change one’s body but by the fear of food itself. It can range from eating a very limited number of foods to refusing food altogether Only in the past few years has the acronym begun circulating on playgrounds and in school nurses’ offices, and it’s not uncommon for parents to first stumble upon it on their own—on Reddit threads, in Facebook groups, on Instagram or TikTok. While classified as an eating disorder, ARFID may be more easily understood in many children as an anxiety disorder that fixates on food. Its rise coincides with a pediatric diagnostic boom in mental health conditions as more and more children are treated for generalized anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and ADHD—raising the question of whether they are a generation maladapted to the world around them or the first generation to be thoroughly understood. ARFID often orbits these diagnoses, a disorder that can become the most physical manifestation of what’s happening in a child’s mind. Read Caitlin Moscatello’s full cover story here: thecut.com/article/what-is-a…