Austin Davis from Florida has explained in detail that he has eaten a strict diet of macaroni and cheese for the past 17 years in a short film.
The documentary, which has been filmed by Vice, sees the 20-year-old go into detail about his love for the cheesy pasta dish as nothing else seems to excite his tastebuds.
Mr Davis lives with his grandparents, Richard and Fay, in a small town, and in the short film, he goes on a trip to the local grocery store to pick up his favourite meal.
As he scours the shelves alongside the documentary crew, Mr Davis refers to the meat section as a 'hellscape' while claiming that he is unfamiliar with most vegetables.
Despite his lack of knowledge in the vegetable department, Mr Davis only came to the grocery store to purchase his beloved Velveeta macaroni and cheese.
The 20-year-old claimed that the meal is his favourite, as it is the most "consistent" and "always tastes pretty much the same".
Mr Davis added: "I don’t wanna say I’m addicted to mac and cheese because it sounds so weird, but my body won't let me eat anything else.
“I didn’t choose to be like this.”
In his home, Mr Davis has a large kitchen cupboard stacked high with boxes of macaroni and cheese. In the documentary, the 20-year-old whips up a bowl of his favourite dish.
He tells the camera he's aware that he has a problem and even said he is 'sick of it', but refused to alter his diet.
“When I try to eat new foods, the first thing that happens is like blinders on the food," Mr Davis explained.
"It gets to the point where it’s like somehow in my hand, I’m about to eat it like, as soon as it enters my mouth, it’s just like a sensory overload of all the things – ‘this is the texture, this is consistency, this is how it feels in your mouth, oh God there’s the taste and there’s a bunch of new flavours that you’ve never experienced before,' even if I like what I’m trying, I’ll still have this involuntary gag."
He then added: “If I don’t like it, sometimes I’m actually [I’ve] just straight-up thrown up like, on the spot.”
To some, Mr Davis' extreme diet would be a dream - but to the 20-year-old, it stems from a personal experience that he had during his childhood.
Mr Davis has Selective Eating Disorder, which is also known as Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID).
It is an anxiety disorder where an individual will persistently refuse to eat specific foods or eat any type of food due to a negative response from certain sensory characteristics of the food item.
Mr Davis explained in the short film that he is particularly grossed out by the thought of blood in raw meat.
When he received his ARFID diagnosis, Mr Davis said he was 'relieved'.
He explained: “I’m not crazy, it has a name! The thing that’s been hanging over my head."
Mr Davis goes on to open up about his difficult upbringing, as he described his dad being "really awesome sometimes and sometimes he was not so awesome"..
Mr Davis was then removed from the home by the Department of Children and Families and he moved in with his grandparents.
He went on to explain in the documentary how he developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the events of his childhood. He subsequently found comfort in macaroni and cheese after he learned to make the dish himself.
Mr Davis is now seeing a therapist and hoped to expand his diet beyond macaroni and cheese in the future.
