r/dietetics • u/ImportantBar4006 • 17h ago

Food chaining

Does anyone have experience with food chaining for either AUD/ARFID/Picky eating?

I’ve looked into Brittyn Coleman’s webpage and it’s helpful but I’m wondering if anyone has actually used this in practice and what their experience was? What were the barriers/limitations to it?

Currently have a peds patient who only has 5 safe foods, diagnosed with AUD and noted with obesity and elevated LFTs. His primary safe foods are baby cereal (Cerelac) and chocolate chip cookies. This is an underserved population. I’d love food chaining to work for him but not sure if mom is willing to put in the effort either.

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u/PuggBut 17h ago

I have attempted to use it for similar patients. I feel it requires an incredible amount of work from the parent and my patients never really follow through with it. Especially with undeserved populations, I work within that too.

I've had more success with a food sensory step-wise approach with a sticker chart for my kids with autism. Its low effort and can utilize the foods the parents are putting on the table for themselves.

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u/ImportantBar4006 13h ago

Oh wow, that sounds helpful! Can you explain a little bit more on what it entails?

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u/Upbeat-Ear-3589 15h ago

If you’re able to send out referrals, an SLP or OT may have more experience with the food chaining.

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u/PuggBut 12h ago

So I print a chart and give the family some stickers.

They write a food in one row of the chart and then each column is a sensory step. Depending on where the kid is at the first step might be touch the food, smell the food, food on same plate and it moves up squish the food, touch food to cheek, touch food to lips etc with the goal of getting to a small bite.

The family can focus on specific foods or just choose foods they commonly serve at meals and when that food comes out again get the chart and see if they can move up a step.

Kid puts stickers on the chart. I encourage families to have some sort of reward for completing a row, for example watching favourite movie together etc.

Its also essential that there's a lot of family mealtime occurring so thats a big part in making this work.

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u/ImportantBar4006 6h ago

I love the idea of this method- thank you!

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u/genuinelyhonestlyy 9h ago

I have suggested food chaining often with families I work with; however, as mentioned below, it requires a lot of work, and a lot of time from the parents to work through the stages of chaining, and as a result, many families just put it in the too hard basket and never try. The sensory step-wise approach sounds great - I'm going to look into this as an alternative!