14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes to eating habits, people are very different. There are people with food obsessions and then there are people with food phobias. College student Leah Frost falls into the second category as she is so scared of most foods that she only eats tinned spaghetti.
The 17-year-old teenager from Leeds has refused to eat most other foods since she was a child and has basically lived on a Heinz spaghetti diet.
Her unique phobia has left her scared of trying other food varieties, so the only aliments included on her menu are spaghetti, white bread, cheese, chips and sponge cake. But even these must be specific brands. For example, she only eats Heinz tinned spaghetti, the bread must be Warburton's and the cheese variety she accepts is Lancashire cheese from the supermarket Morrisons.
“If someone puts something down in front of me and I know it isn't right it makes me feel anxious and scared to eat it,” Leah said.
“It puts me in some difficult situations when I'm out with my friends because a lot of them don't know how bad my phobia is,” she added.
However, despite her frail diet, high in fat, sugar and carbohydrate, Leah remains a svelte size eight.
According to Daily Mail, Leah's mother has tried almost everything to change her daughter's strange eating habit and persuade her to have a healthier diet, including therapy, but all her efforts have failed.
“We've tried everything – I've even sent her to have cognitive behavioral therapy, but after having it for a year the only progress she had made was to try a slice of raw carrot and she still didn't like it,” her mother Yvonne said.
It seems that this unhealthy diet is already taking its toll on her as the negative effects on her health already started to show up. She feels tired all the time and her iron count is low.
Nutritionists warn that this type of diet is very dangerous for one's health as it's lacking essential nutrients, but contains plenty of refined carbohydrates instead. They say that in the long run it can lead to insulin resistance and result in diabetes or obesity.
Leah's eating disorder is called Selective Eating Disorder (SED), which prevents the consumption of certain foods. It generally appears in childhood and some people may continue to be afflicted with SED throughout their adult lives, which also seems to be Leah's case.