Angular 2 Custom validator that depends on another form control

You can navigate your way through the control and its parent form group to another control:

example(): ValidatorFn {
     return (control: AbstractControl): ValidationErrors | null => {
         const forbidden = control.value < control.parent.controls["anotherControl"].value;
         return forbidden ? { forbidden: { message: "Custom message" } } : null;
     };
}

Add the above as a function inside your component and declare this validator to your form control:

formGroup = new FormGroup({
    //..
    targetControl: new FormControl("", [this.example()]),
    anotherControl: new FormControl("")
    //..
});

You are one step closer.

You need to attach your custom validator to the FormGroup instead, because it needs to know two FormControl (categories and mealTypes), so attaching to FormGroup will give the validator more broad view and access to the entire FormControl

To achieve that, change your ngOnInit to

ngOnInit() {
    this.findForm = new FormGroup({
        mealTypes : new FormControl(null, Validators.Required),
        categories : new FormControl(null)
        // others form control here
    }, validateMealType); // <-- see here is your custom function
}

On above code, you actually have to use FormGroup constructor instead of FormBuilder, so you can attach your custom validation in the parameters. Also, move your custom validator outside the component class.

Take a look at this Plunker to get more insight for your specific case here.