NT's, why are you so obsessed with it?
I don't want my food really hot, which used to drive one of my exes crazy. Whenever I tried eating cold leftovers, or waited for what he thought was too long before eating, he would get upset and take my plate and force-microwave my food.
One of the Asperger wives once complained about her husband's habit of eating "cold" food, not because he showed up too late to eat with her (they rarely eat together anyway), but because she grew tired of trying to find ways of keeping his food heated. "Eggs, bacon and pancakes are not tasty when cold", she said.
When people who are obsessed with hot food talk about cold food, they usually don't even talk about cold food. "Cold food" tends to mean "food that is no longer hot enough to burn your face off". According to these people, food has to be eaten right away, "before it gets cold".
Okay, thanks, but I'm sensitive to heat. I always wait for a while before eating, for many reasons. To begin with, hot food eaten immediately after cooking burns. Not only does the heat make the experience of eating uncomfortable and painful, I don't really feel the taste of the food either, and the texture of most foods gets better after it's cooled off a bit (especially bacon, Mrs. Aspie!). When I eat "cold" food (as in warm but colder than it was from the beginning), I probably feel it basically the same way as most people do when eating it hot.
Sensory issues seem to be the part of autism spectrum disorders that annoy "normal" people the most. Take sunglasses, for example. People have all sorts of ideas about when sunglasses are acceptable and not - you can only wear them outdoors, between noon and about 5 PM, in late spring and summer. Before I decided to ignore that norm, my eyes constantly hurt and my migraines were significantly more frequent. Even being distracted to small sounds tends to annoy people or even make them angry. I don't get it.
