Food
Woman Lives On Chicken Nuggets, She Hasn’t Eaten Fruit Or Vegetables In 22 Years
She’s never sick and remains very upbeat.
Summer Monro suffers from an Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake [ARFID] disorder. It’s characterized by the person avoiding certain kinds of foods. The 25-Year-Old believes the disorder had triggered when she was persuaded to eat mash potato aged 3, the one thing she didn’t like at the time.
Since then, she has had her stomach fixed on Chicken nuggets, and Walker crisps and chips as just the sight of fruit or vegetables are enough to make her vomit.
Her phobia for fruit and veg is so bad that she had even turned down £1,000 in cash to avoid eating a single pea.
Summer has tried therapy and hypnotherapy to overcome her ARFID but admits she struggles to see a way to overcome her fear. “All I eat is Birds Eye chicken nuggets or crisps. My weight fluctuates with what I eat. I have tried to try fruit and veg, I tried to eat some apples, but I physically can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to try. It just makes me feel sick – there’s a part of my brain that physically won’t let me do it.”
She added: “My grandad obviously wants me to eat more. He offered me a grand to eat one garden pea and I couldn’t do it.”
“I’m really bored; I don’t get excited to eat. It’s worse at lunchtime when people are eating sandwiches and I have a packet of crisps. I just can’t see myself changing. I like the smell of food but if I try to eat it, it makes me physically sick. It puts a lot of pressure on me. My heart tells me I want to eat it but my brain says no. As soon as it touches my lips, I can’t do it.”
Ladbible reported that even her go-to-meal isn’t that safe. She had avoided chicken nuggets for three months in 2021 after finding a vein in one of them.
Summer’s eating habits are downright restrictive, but it doesn’t affect her physically but mentally. She attested that she doesn’t feel lethargic or anything and has had blood tests, which stated that she’s all fine. It turns out her feeding habits affect her partner Dean McKnight, 26. The pair have to cook two separate meals a day, and Summer can only eat a bowl of chips when they are out for dinner.
“My partner takes it really well. When we first met, I didn’t tell him about ARFID and we were walking around town looking for a restaurant and I ended up having to tell him because I kept saying NO.”
While she utterly struggles to see a way out, Summer described how everything outside of her diet is good, stating that a lot of people claim they’re shocked she’s never ill, very upbeat, a happy person, and can’t just comprehend how she’s got so much energy. However, the project coordinator from Cambridge hopes that one day soonest she will find the help she needs and overcome her food phobia.