Plan B · Learneating and PANS
When safe foods suddenly become inedible
A child who ate steak every night now gags at the sight of it. Nothing is holding. This is rarely pickiness — and treating it as pickiness is why nothing works.
The reframe
"Foods he liked suddenly became inedible" is the same fingerprint as medication refusal — a safe thing abruptly re-coded as unsafe. That is PANS wearing a food costume.
It is not willpower and it is not a phase. And critically: when the entire safe-food range collapses at once, that is usually a flare, not slow ARFID drift. The window closes with the flare and reopens as it settles.
Check the biology before the behavior
You cannot behavior-coach a child whose body is actively fighting food. Rule these out first:
- Constipation. This is the big one. A backed-up gut means no daytime appetite and early fullness — which produces the exact pattern of skipping lunch and then binging at dinner. A cleaned-out child eats.
- Dehydration — sluggish gut, no appetite.
- Appetite-suppressing supplements. Some adaptogens and herbs genuinely suppress appetite. Check the whole list.
- Taste changes. Low zinc can alter taste and flatten appetite — worth testing rather than assuming, and worth testing alongside copper, since the two only mean something together.
- The flare itself.
Then the feeding approach
- No pressure, no bribes, no "one bite." They backfire on ARFID the same way they backfire on OCD.
- Do not die on the lunch hill. Front-load calories to when the child is actually hungry.
- Protect the win. If dinner is the meal that works, never shame it. Those are the calories.
- Liquid calories are the cheat code. A fortified smoothie bypasses every texture problem — banana, nut butter, avocado, a spoon of oil, protein. Children will drink 500 calories they would never eat off a plate.
- Food-chain from anchors — one sensory change at a time, a tiny sample beside a full portion of the safe food, zero pressure to eat it.
And the safety net
If your child is small for their age or losing weight, weigh weekly and loop in the pediatrician and a feeding-therapy OT. ARFID plus growth faltering is the line where this needs real eyes on it, not just a better strategy.
Want this answered for your own child? A Plan B synthesis reads every lab and note you have — together — and tells you what is driving the picture, what has never been checked, and what to ask for next.
The first one is free, and you keep the list either way. Phone photos of labs are fine.
Plan B for PANS is written by a parent, not a physician. Nothing here is medical advice or a substitute for your child's clinicians — it is meant to make you the best-informed person in the room when you talk to them.