This foundational session explores the rich and often overlooked landscape of food identity—for autistic individuals and those who support them. Together, we’ll unpack how food is far more than nutrition or behavior; it is deeply tied to identity, autonomy, culture, and relational safety.

The session will focus on food identity as an extension of Autistic identity—shaped by sensory needs, monotropism, comfort, and resistance to imposed norms. We will explore how cultural, familial, and societal forces shape food preferences and often pathologize autistic eating experiences through narrow, Western lense. Concepts such as epistemic injustice, internalized stigma, and masking at mealtimes will be introduced to help participants reflect on the deeper forces shaping food narratives.

Reflective practices will be incorporated for participants and clinicians to explore their own food experiences and identities. “My Food Timeline” and “Inherited Food Scripts” will support participants in examining their relationships with food and unlearning internalized scripts.

This session explores autistic food experiences through the lens of sensory processing, psychological safety, and communication, challenging dominant narratives that frame food preferences and needs as “behavioral problems”. Instead, participants will be invited to see these patterns as adaptive responses rooted in regulation, safety, autonomy, and lived experience.

We begin with a deep dive into sensory processing and how dynamic variables—such as texture, temperature, smell, and environmental stressors—can dramatically alter a person’s experience of food. The discussion will also include how hormonal shifts (puberty, perimenopause, stress, etc.) impact sensory thresholds and food tolerances, often leading to frustration, grief, or anger.

This session also centers food as communication—especially for non-speaking individuals where acceptance, refusal, and preference become powerful expressions of needs, boundaries, or overwhelm. Participants will learn to recognize refusal as an act of agency, not defiance, and examine how power dynamics and adult projection can distort these expressions.

This session invites participants to reimagine what a “healthy” relationship with food can look like when defined through neurodivergent needs, lived experience, and personal autonomy—rather than through diet culture, nutritionism, or moralistic frameworks. Together, we’ll explore how food identity is shaped by consent, expression, relational safety, and the ability to move with, not against, a person’s needs.

We’ll explore the concept of food masking—how people may eat in socially acceptable ways to avoid scrutiny, shame, or unwanted attention—and the emotional and sensory costs of this effort, including shutdowns and fatigue.

The session discusses the double empathy problem during mealtimes, especially when Autistic individuals lack the language to describe their food experiences, and caregivers or professionals are not attuned to that language. We’ll emphasize the importance of co-creating affirming communication around food identity.

This session focuses on the ways food identity can be disrupted—through trauma, stigma, medicalization, or behavioral interventions—and how Autistic individuals and those who support them can begin to gently reconnect with food on their own terms. We explore how food can shift from a source of conflict or shame to one of curiosity, safety, and expression.

Participants will reflect on the grief that often accompanies fractured food relationships—whether due to survival-based eating, imposed interventions, or well-meaning guidance that didn’t align with individual needs. We’ll offer ways to rebuild trust through slowing down, attunement, and offering food without expectation.

This session also explores cultural and relational reconnection—how food rituals and traditions can be reclaimed, co-created, or reimagined. We’ll discuss how shared meals can offer connection but may not feel safe for everyone, and how honoring divergence is key to relational healing. Finally, we celebrate food as joy, resistance, and creative expression that affirm Autistic food identities in all their valid and meaningful forms.