Monday, 12 November 2018

FOOD

How can Dyspraxia affect food? you may ask, well these are just some of the aspects
Taste and Textures
Layout/Plate spacing
Cutlery

Dyspraxia is probably not something that most people would think affects food however as alot of people with dyspraxia have sensitivity issues this can have a very large siginificant impact on the food and the way we eat our food
the hyper or hypo sensitivity aspect of dyspraxia can have a huge impact on both the texture and taste of foods possibly to the extent not being able to eat a certain item at all or not being able to taste any particular item of food for me chicken is a food that has no flavour its like chewing on nothing and a lot of meats (on their own) are similar and take too long to chew and  quickly lose any of the flavour they may have had.

something that people probably notice more and probably associate more with autism but it also affects dyspraxia a lot is the order and layout of food on plates such as this food cant touch that food or sometimes not having the food on the same plate which for me is when having baked beans they have to go in a seperate bowl to the rest of my dinner and then when actually eating the food i tend to eat in some sort of order such as beans first then mash then sauages its not always exactly the same order all the time (sometimes it is with certain foods) but possibly more noticeable for me is that i always eat each item of food seperately so using sausage mash and beans as the example again i would eat mash then beans then sausages i pretty much never go back and forth.


then the using of cutlery when eating is something that people with dyspraxia may find difficult and dyspraxics may use and hold cutlery in very different ways that could be considered odd by others (fairly similar to pens aswell) i may have gone through this in my everyday/day-to-day life blog. i think the use of cutlery is often referred to as the stab and pull motion and i am aware that i definitely do this, i also always use my right hand for any movement aspect involving cutlery so using sausages as the example again i would cut a sausage with the fork in my left hand (and stab) and knife in my right hand but to then eat the bit of sausage i would swap the fork to my right hand.as well as this the shape of the cutlery i find can make a difference you can just about see that the fork in the above photo has a flat handle which is something i would always choose over a piece of cutlery with a round handle if that option is available.
i have seen that there are different types of cutlery available to help which have different shaped handles very similar to some pens which is something that could help some