‘What may begin as a fear of a particular food can generalize to anxiety about going to restaurants, attending social events, buying groceries, cooking, and more’
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Fear of food, or also what we call cybo-phobia.
00:04What is it?
00:05So when we talk about fear of food,
00:08it's basically this intense fear in regards to food.
00:13And it could be multiple things that people are afraid of.
00:17It could be perishable food,
00:19or it could also be something that you've probably eaten before many, many times.
00:24It could be a spaghetti, it could be a noodle, it could be rice.
00:28And sometimes, because it started with one fear of food,
00:33it can go and expand into several types of food.
00:37And before you know it, you start to be very fearful of many, many things as well.
00:43So when we talk about fear of food,
00:45and it's actually quite common for some people to not like certain food, and that's okay.
00:51But when we talk about fear of food,
00:53it's this extreme feeling when you have extreme fear and anxiety
00:58when you want to even think about eating that food,
01:02or even being in the same proximity as that food.
01:06I've had cases where they've been fearful of rice,
01:10fearful of day-to-day food like spaghetti or noodles.
01:17And it doesn't stop there.
01:19The problem is that it starts to affect their functioning, their daily functioning,
01:24to a point where they start to avoid social events when they think that the food is going to be there.
01:30Or it could even be avoiding family functions,
01:34or even not doing daily routines such as buying groceries or cooking for the family.
01:41All of this is basically causing a lot of impairment in their daily functioning.
01:47So again, there's normal fear or avoiding some food, and that's okay.
01:53But once it starts causing this extreme fear and anxiety about the food,
02:00then it's what we call the fear of food or phobia for the food.
02:05So when we talk about fear of food, there could be multiple causes.
02:10It could be that you may have had a traumatic event regarding the food.
02:14It could also be culturally something that you've seen on social media,
02:18maybe the thing that you've seen in your family or the people around you.
02:23So it could be multiple causes.
02:25But what we know is that when we talk about cyberphobia,
02:29it causes these symptoms of anxiety such as heart palpitation, difficulty breathing,
02:38nauseous, butterflies in your stomach, even dizziness or even fainting to a certain point.
02:45All we know is that with the fear of phobia, it causes a lot of functioning issues, impairment.
02:53And it's causing a lot of deterioration in your quality of life.
02:57So do seek help. Fear of phobia is treatable.