Visual confusion with food

dancsfo

I've been reading about avoiding overstimulation (TV sounds, rough fabrics) and then realized that even food appearance may cause confusion or overstimulation.

For example, if you have multi-grain bread, poppy seeds on a muffin, then a PWD may spend much time picking away at it or just having a hard time with it. One may be picking away and separating the seeds until there was nothing left of food item. Same goes for toast with burn marks, so I toast them very lightly.

So I wonder: Have you tried staying with "solid" foods? Not solid, as in non liquid, but solid in appearance. So rather than granola, try something smooth in appearance, like cream of wheat.

On a dining area, I've read that patterns like a checkered tablecloth can be distressing, so I find that even a small thing like a plain looking placemat seems to work.

But for food, it's not easy. Even ground pepper seems to encourage picking away at it and there aren't many things to eat that are smooth looking lumps (and they may not taste good)

For fruit (like grapes), I had to find ones that are as smooth looking as possible. Mixed nuts pretty much seem to cause distress - as one can't figure out which item to eat, and some parts seems to resemble "garbage", and are thrown away.