How cooks with ADHD are overcoming challenges and thriving

Yi’s drawings are the basis of Panda Cub Diner, her online cooking club, focusing on Sichuan dishes. Photos: NYT

From a young age, Linda Yi was drawn to the kitchen and loved watching her parents make Sichuan dishes inspired by their native Chengdu in China. But when she’d ask them to go over a step or recipe she’d watched them make dozens of times, they’d reply the same way: “You still don’t remember?”

When, in her mid-20s, she became one of the 4.4% of adults ages 18 to 44 diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, her relationship to cooking changed for the better. She said the diagnosis helped her “see the areas of my brain that need support”, and to adapt, as many cooks with the disorder have.

For many adults, ADHD symptoms can present differently than they do in children, and in some cases, become more severe amid job, relationship and household stressors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. And these challenges prove especially true in the kitchen.

One of the major issues, Jessica McCabe, a YouTube creator and the author of How To ADHD, explains in her book, relates to “executive function”, or the cognitive processes that tell us how to prioritise tasks, sustain attention and effectively plan for both long- and short-term goals, all of which play an important role whether you are shopping for ingredients or making sure your food doesn’t overcook.

Yi uses recipe doodles and illustrations to navigate ADHD while celebrating her love for food.“The executive function system is like the conductor of your brain’s orchestra,” said Marcy Caldwell, the owner and director of the Centre For ADHD, a therapy and coaching practice based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She cites cooking as being among the most complex activities calling for executive function, adding that it can be overwhelming for her patients because it generally happens at the end of the day, when energy is depleted and medication may be wearing off.

For Yi, 34, feelings of exhaustion and frustration were intense: “It always felt like my brain was a sieve, and, as I was putting things in, things were falling out.”

She began taking notes while her parents cooked and turned those cooking instructions “into doodles with panda cubs or cats”, she said.

She began sharing those doodles to her Instagram in 2019 and gained a substantial following, finding joy in exploring and making her family’s dishes in a way that allowed her to colourfully and playfully imbue the sights, sounds and tastes of cooking alongside written instructions.

For Yi, recording recipes in a creative way, instead of relying on memory, became central to helping her with executive function. Now, when she enters her kitchen with her recipe cards in tow, she prioritises working with her brain instead of against it.

She has even started Panda Cub Diner, an online cooking club focusing on Sichuan dishes.

On her YouTube channel, McCabe also discusses her struggles cooking with the disorder. She employs strategies to keep her from wandering off, and uses ingredients like pre-cut vegetables and frozen goods to simplify prep work.

Recipes with fewer steps and bowls to clean up and keep track of, like sheet-pan meals or slow cooker meals, are also helpful. And yes, she says even takeout can make the act of cooking or feeding easier, urging her followers to “lose the shame or guilt around” these tools. “It’s not a luxury, it’s an accommodation,” she said.

The challenges of ADHD can also extend to chefs working in the fast-paced, high-stress environment of a professional kitchen.

As a young line cook, Spencer Horovitz, chef and owner of the dinner series Hadeem in San Francisco, California often felt as if a career in the culinary field wasn’t possible.

Yi records recipes in a creative way, instead of relying on memory.

A line cook’s work typically starts many hours before service, requiring prolonged focus, task prioritisation and time management. “It felt like I was treading water to get to the level that it seems other cooks are starting at,” he said.

While he would be able to “laser in on a dish and replicate it a bunch”, during dinner services, he said, sustained projects, like prepping ingredients and dish components, proved difficult. Other chefs assumed he didn’t care about the work, and he was fired several times.

“People would say, ‘You just need to try harder and muscle through it’,” Horovitz said, “and that’s just not the case”.

He realised he needed to find ways to support himself.

“If I would take care of my knives, then I should take care of my body, too,” he recalled telling himself. He started taking medication, eating healthier, prioritising sleep, limiting alcohol (“hangovers caused my ADHD to be much worse”) and drinking more water.

“Just having a rubric and learning to add structure to my diet was extremely helpful,” he said.

Since focusing her work on ADHD 15 years ago, Caldwell has seen a steady stream of chefs in her practice, she said. Yet she doesn’t use prescriptive solutions.

“It’s really about the process of developing your own strategies that support how your brain works,” she said. That may mean cooking alone or “body-doubling”, cooking with someone virtually to introduce accountability, as Yi does in her club, and muting or turning off the camera when overstimulated.

“I think it’s really important for people with ADHD to know their brain isn’t better or worse, it’s just different,” Caldwell said. – ©2024 The New York Times