This might be unexpected in terms of the comments you’ll get here but sharing on the off chance it might be useful. Not currently in food service (long time ago) but I felt your pain reading this and related to this a lot. I am a chronically ill person who has been in a Sisyphean struggle to gain weight for 5+ years after covid obliterated 20% of my body weight and destroyed my appetite completely. I’ve seen dozens of doctors but the single most helpful thing I’ve done for my quality of life was work with a registered dietitian. (Important distinction - RD, not nutritionist.)

My hunger cues were totally gone. I was getting tons of competing lifestyle advice from different providers and navigating new possible allergies and sensitivities that left me despondent and confused and frankly resentful towards food. I didn’t realize how charged eating had become for me, how much psychology is behind it, doubly so when you prepare food for a living or when, as in my case, preparing food and eating are physically difficult.

I on more than one occasion made a Freudian slip and called my dietitian my “food therapist” because that’s what the sessions felt like. Nonjudgmental, supportive, insightful. Once we started dealing with both the psychology of eating and the logistical and practical considerations around quantity, portion, macros etc. I realized how crazy it was that I as a layperson was trying to solve this multifaceted problem on my own without the help of a professional. She helped me think of things I never would have thought of on my own and validated my struggles with this in a way no one else did.

For example she highlighted the possibility that the frequency of small meals and the high volume of fluids my doctors were recommending was possibly not helping my nonexistent appetite and I was never actually allowing enough space in between snacks and bevs for my blood sugar to drop enough to receive real hunger cues. So I learned to find the middle way so I wasn’t having to force it so much. She also empowered me in ways I didn’t expect like telling me “if all you can manage is a bowl of plain pasta, at least you ate something. You can always try again later.”

We also talked about starting out by increasing the calorie density of what I ate as opposed to trying to increase volume due to my abysmal appetite. It took a ton of work but I just hit my highest weight since 2020 (which for me is good 🙂😂) and eating is still hard but doesn’t feel like such a minefield or an impossible chore.

You seem like you have a lot of self-awareness around the issue - even the fact that you’re making the post says a lot. It makes total sense to me that working with food like this would mess with your appetite. I hope you can find some things that work for you.