A woman in London has been surviving on chips, crisps and chicken nuggets, due to a food phobia, for the last 22 years.
Summer Monro, 25, from Cambridge, London, suffers from avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), which turned her off vegetables permanently after an accident that occurred when she was force-fed mashed potato by her mother at the age of three.
Ever since, she has survived on a diet of chicken nuggets, potato chips and crisps. On a regular day, Summer will skip breakfast before having a packet of Walkers crisps for lunch and six or eight Bird’s Eye chicken nuggets for dinner, according to reports.
Simply looking at a piece of vegetable or fruit is enough to make her throw up and she even turned down an offer from her grandfather of £1,000 in exchange for eating one single pea, the report added.
According to Summer, she feels bored and she doesn’t get excited to have food. Even if she tries to eat food it makes her physically sick. Her counsellors have tried hypnotherapy in an attempt to banish her restrictive eating but nothing has worked.
Summer said that all her food needs to be crunchy in texture, and she can only eat very thin fries which are crispy. It is physically impossible for her to swallow any vegetables or fruit.
Summer’s weight fluctuates due to her eating habits. At one point she stopped eating chicken nuggets and was surviving on just crisps.
ARFID is an eating disorder where the affected person avoids certain types of food items. It can be caused by sensitivity to the temperature, taste, texture, smell or look of certain food items, or it could be triggered by a past traumatic experience such as choking or severe pain caused by eating.