Food Selectivity in Children with Autism: Guidelines for Assessment and Clinical Interventions.

This review explains why many autistic children have eating difficulties like refusing foods or eating only a few types of food. These problems happen more often in autistic children than other children. The eating issues can be caused by sensory sensitivities or behavioral factors. The review provides guidance for professionals on how to assess these problems and suggests proven strategies that both therapists and parents can use to help expand what autistic children will eat.

This review provides clinical guidelines for assessing and managing food selectivity in children with autism spectrum disorders. The authors highlight that children with ASD experience significantly more feeding problems than their peers, including food refusal, limited food variety, and restrictive eating patterns. These feeding difficulties stem from both medical/sensory and behavioral factors. The review emphasizes the importance of comprehensive assessment to identify underlying causes before implementing interventions.

The authors present evidence-based sensory and behavioral strategies that can be implemented by clinicians and adapted for parent-mediated interventions to address food selectivity in children with ASD.

Comprehensive assessment of both medical/sensory and behavioral factors is essential before intervention planning. Evidence-based sensory and behavioral strategies can be implemented by clinicians and adapted for parent training. The guidelines provide a structured approach to addressing the significant feeding challenges commonly experienced by children with ASD.

This is a review paper without original research data. No sample size is reported, and the abstract does not specify the methodology for selecting or analyzing studies. The evidence quality of reviewed studies is not described in the abstract.

Autisms Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterized by core symptoms (social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors) and related comorbidities, including sensory anomalies, feeding issues, and challenging behaviors. Children with ASD experience significantly more feeding problems than their peers. In fact, parents and clinicians have to manage daily the burden of various dysfunctional behaviors of children at mealtimes (food refusal, limited variety of food, single food intake, or liquid diet). These dysfunctional behaviors at mealtime depend on different factors that are either medical/sensorial or behavioral.

Consequently, a correct assessment is necessary in order to program an effective clinical intervention. The aim of this study is to provide clinicians with a guideline regarding food selectivity concerning possible explanations of the phenomenon, along with a direct/indirect assessment gathering detailed and useful information about target feeding behaviors. Finally, a description of evidence-based sensorial and behavioral strategies useful also for parent-mediated intervention is reported addressing food selectivity in children with ASD.