How anxiety can effect our perception of texture in food

Why Anxiety Makes You Hyper-Aware of Food Textures

Anxiety doesn’t just live in your mind, it can change how you experience the world, right down to the way food feels in your mouth. If you’ve ever found yourself fixating on the sliminess of a tomato or the grittiness of a pear during anxious moments, you’re not alone. Science is uncovering why anxiety makes us more sensitive to the textures of food, and how this heightened awareness can shape our eating habits.

The Anxiety-Sensory Connection

Anxiety is more than just worry or nervousness; it’s a state of heightened arousal. This state primes your senses to be more alert to potential threats in your environment. Research shows that people with higher anxiety often have increased sensory sensitivity, meaning they notice subtle details, like the texture of food, more acutely than others. This sensitivity isn’t limited to taste; it can include sound, touch, and smell as well.

Sensory Sensitivity: The Hidden Mediator

Studies in both children and adults have found that sensory sensitivity mediates the relationship between anxiety and picky eating. In other words, anxiety makes you more sensitive to sensory experiences, and this heightened sensitivity can make you more selective or even averse to certain foods, especially those with challenging textures.

How Anxiety Alters Taste and Texture Perception

When you’re anxious, your body’s stress response kicks in, releasing hormones like cortisol and increasing arousal levels. Recent research has demonstrated that anxiety can suppress the perception of sweetness and enhance the perception of bitterness, particularly when you’re aware of your anxious state. While this research focused on taste, the same heightened awareness can make textures feel more intense- slimy feels slimier, crunchy feels crunchier.

The Vicious Cycle: Anxiety, Expectation, and Food Aversion

If you already expect a food to feel unpleasant, anxiety can amplify that expectation. When anxious individuals are exposed to disliked foods, their state sensory sensitivity increases, confirming their fears that the food will be aversive and reinforcing future avoidance. This cycle can make it even harder to try new foods or tolerate challenging textures.

Children, Anxiety, and Texture Sensitivity

Children are especially prone to this cycle. Research shows that anxious children are more likely to be picky eaters, and this is largely due to their heightened sensory sensitivity. These children may express more distress and resistance to novel foods, limiting their dietary variety early in life and setting the stage for ongoing selective eating.

Adults Aren’t Immune

While the relationship between anxiety, sensory sensitivity, and picky eating is strongest in children, it persists into adulthood. Adults with high anxiety still show increased sensitivity to food textures and are more likely to be selective eaters, although the effect is somewhat less pronounced than in children.

The Brain’s Role: Hypervigilance and Attentional Bias

Anxiety is linked to hypervigilance - a state where your brain is constantly scanning for threats. This makes you more likely to notice and focus on unpleasant textures in food, sometimes to the point where it overshadows taste or enjoyment. Studies have found that anxious individuals show attentional biases toward images of new or disliked foods, which may translate into heightened awareness of texture during actual eating.

Implications for Eating Habits and Health

This heightened sensitivity can have real consequences. It can lead to avoidance of healthy foods with challenging textures, reinforce picky eating, and even contribute to nutritional deficiencies. Understanding the link between anxiety and sensory sensitivity is crucial for developing interventions for picky eating and food aversion, especially in children.

What Can You Do About It?

If you or your child struggles with food textures, recognising the role of anxiety is the first step. Mindfulness and relaxation techniques can also help lower overall arousal, making textures feel less overwhelming.

References and Further Reading

• The effects of anxiety on taste perception: The role of awareness (2023, PMC10668578)

• Sensory sensitivity mediates the relationship between anxiety and picky eating (2018, PMC8056743)

• Relationships between sensory sensitivity, anxiety, and selective eating (ResearchGate PDF)