Conditioned Food Avoidance & Sensitivity
Throughout my thirty years of client counselling, I became increasingly intrigued by the vicious cycle of fear, food avoidance, and worsening sensitivity that many clients described. To better understand this pattern, I turned to research on behavioural conditioning, which offers an excellent framework for explaining how illness can become linked with food—and how these learned associations can, in turn, trigger physical symptoms.
Building on this framework, I developed two key terms to apply the concept of conditioning to food sensitivities.. The first term captures the learned patterns of fear and avoidance, while the second highlights how these patterns can actually increase sensitivity over time. Together, they provide a language for understanding—and ultimately addressing—the cycle.
Conditioned Food Avoidance
Diet restriction driven by Food-Illness associations. The associations can be:
Accurate: leading to a helpful restriction (i.e., a biological reaction to a food component).
Inaccurate: leading to dietary over-restriction.
Conditioned Food Sensitivity
Physical reactions driven by Food–Illness Associations. In other words, fear and negative expectations can create or intensify unpleasant physical sensations.
These negative expectations may be conscious (“I think I will react to this food”) or subconscious (an underlying concern or sense of danger about the food).