To find the obsession with snacks weird

My MIL is the worst. The kids can't go to the park for 30 minutes without her packing yogurts, biscuits, crackers, sometimes even sandwiches, abd this is just after they've had lunch!
I don't think it's good to be constantly eating. I generally give my children one snack a day between lunch and dinner. They're usually ravenous when they come in from school so I give them a hot chocolate and snack.

DC1 would leave primary school incandescent with hangry rage. We considered all possible reasons until low blood sugar was casually suggested by an SMSA. That was it. A little pack of raisins in the lunch box for after school sorted it.

My kids are young, 2 and 5. They definitely need more than 3 meals a day- usually 4 meals and maybe a snack.
Breakfast
First lunch 1130 (matches school lunch for the younger/ they also get a banana and biscuit on arrival), older eats at 1045 and 1230 at school)
snack around 315 - main meal if DH is working at the office/snack if he’s WFH
Dinner served sometime between 530 and 630. (Or else porridge and fruit at 630 if we had main meal early)
When dinner is on the early side or if they didn’t like it I’ll do porridge right before bed. Otherwise offer a banana or similar. They are awful if I try to put them to bed hungry.

At most one of those is a processed snacky food. Breakfast is cereal or toast, lunch is pasta, leftovers or sandwiches, main meal is usually a curry or tray bake. Then a snacky meal like cheese and toast, cheese and fruit, yogurt, peanut butter on rice cakes. If I want a treat that’s the time I’d do biscuits or crisps or some chocolate.

On the weekends we do snack a lot if we do a day out. Pulling out crackers, cheese and fruit endlessly because we often eat breakfast at home and then might not have a sit down meal till 4 or 5.

The big difference I see from my childhood is that we might know 1-2 families per year who had individual packaged snack or got things like oreos daily.

Fashion designer Bella Freud posted on insta the other week about the food philosophy in her house as a child, it was a very “dry ingredients” household, there was no easy snacking food, and every meal would take hours on end to cook arduously from scratch. It led to disordered eating, gorging herself and having to lie under the dinner table after meals because she was stuffed and completely unable to moderate herself because food felt so scarce, and she used to beg for snacks and do sad eyes until her school friends felt sorry for her and gave her some of the prized “snack” food from her lunchbox.

Also lots of children’s continence issues (past the usual age of toilet training) related to dehydration which plays havoc with the bladder and bowel! Our bodies do need water!

When I first met my sc they expected to have
Breakfast
Mid morning snack
Lunch with pudding
Afternoon snack
Evening meal with pudding
Supper

I soon put a stop to that! My kids and I eat 3 meals a day and the very occasional snack but not often.

I blame nurseries too. Sc was in them full time from a few months old.

Mine has a snack after school, but of seen kids being handed snacks as the leave the classroom when they live the same 10 minute distance away. Maybe their kids winge more.. I'd probably so the same for a bit of peace tbh

Or it's confirmation bias and you're just more likely to notice a ''fat kid'' who dares to eat after school.

I live quite near a school, & I notice it's always the fat kids that are eating.

As a 60s child we had breakfast, a small bottle of milk mid morning, a substantial two course school lunch and I was still absolutely ravenous after school. I can’t see much difference between having a snack on the way home, or one after getting home as I did. We didn’t have our evening meal until both parents were home from work. Having a snack to eat on the way home would have been lovely, although we all walked home by ourselves from the age of 5 or 6. There were water fountains in school so we were not dehydrated.

My DC would also get home feeling very hungry after school or activities so had a snack straight away. If I collected them in the car I would take something with me. They still had plenty of room for their evening meal. At home, I would give them a snack of fruit and bread and butter mid morning as they were early risers.

Surely, there is no correlation with snacks and on demand breast feeding, as a pp mentioned? Or weight gain for that matter. My DC eat pretty healthily as adults and we have always been a slim family. It is overall diet and intake plus other factors to do with metabolism which matter. It seems rather unfair to judge people based on seeing them having a snack or giving one to their children.

The idea that we constantly need to eat drives my barmy. Very few of us are very thin, we can cope for 4-6 hours between meals. Even my carbs monster teenager is fine without snacks - they do need 3 square meals a day though, or they tend to get shouty (very busy growing).

Yes op! It's mad..my niece and nephews have no off button for food. They constantly need to be eating something.. I remember them trying to explain the concept of 'second breakfast ' to me. Wtf.

Thinking back to my own childhood, I had cereal for breakfast, for lunch at school at 12pm, I had 4 cream crackers with cheese, an apple and a small biscuit bar.

When I got home (20 min school bus journey) I got two custard creams. . Then had dinner at 5pm and that was it til the cereal the next day.... what am I missing ? We weren't malnourished?! 😂

Me too. I remember illicitly drinking out of the taps in the bathrooms. I'm terrible at recognising when I am thirsty now, and rarely remember to drink enough water.

Enid Blyton's books are full of kids gorging on multiple "ices", chocolate, snaffling buns and biscuits from Cook or random farmers' wives. They ate 4 meals a day and seemed to be constantly grazing in between. I think very privileged children always ate a lot and had regular snacks. My dad grew up dirt poor jn the 40s and had snacks - bread and dripping, sugar butty, an apple or a bit of stale bread toasted with jam.

There's no hard and fast rule that western "mealtimes" are the optimum way to eat. It's nonsense. Nutrition is, obviously, more nuanced than " if you don't cram the day's calories into three approved sessions you'll be fat". The only "obsession with snacks" I see is from the pearl-clutching judgemental brigade who come over all unnecessary at the thought of a child being given a gingerbread man when it's not teatime 🙄

I can't talk because I'm aaallways snacking - but I agree the obsession with providing snacks like it's an emergency is weird.

I've met children who start panicking if they feel hungry like they're in danger of death because it's a feeling they've been taught is urgent

I remember when DD was going through a growth spurt during primary school and would come out absolutely ravenous. I started meeting her at the school gates with a chicken leg. She needed a significantly higher intake than I did. And she was far from obese - we couldn't get get any school trousers to fit that year because she was measuring at age 8 around the waist and age 14 in leg length.

Kids in the 1970s had free milk at school

For those saying it's not "new".

The whole lots of snacking thing started in the 80s. So many on MN would be post the snacking era.

Before that quite young kids had some snacks, usually depending on other mealtimes and such - so perhaps an after school snack for kids who wouldn't have a meal until much later in the day. Or where people ate breakfast early they would have a mid morning snack.

And for many mid day may have been the larger meal, up into the 60s in some places.

But snacking was limited and not just "every time you feel a bit hungry you need a snack." The change in the 80s was this idea that you should never feel hungry. And more recently, I think the rise of packaged snacks. Lots of kids when I was at school would have an apple or banana for mid-morning snack, or a little carton of milk. Now it's often very processed stuff.

DD was (and still is) always ravenous after school so I'd take a snack along after primary school especially as several days we weren't coming straight home.
I agree some parents are obsessed about giving their kids snacks all the time amd the kids hardly eat at mealtimes. SIL is like this with her kids.

My youngest son (autistic) is underweight so snacks are advised by his dietician.

I have a toddler and the NHS guidelines are 3 meals and 2 snacks. Seems a lot of food to me but they only have little stomachs.

I take a snack for my kids. I pick up my youngest from the infant school and then we walk round to the junior school to wait 15 mins for his siblings before walking home. Youngest comes out of school ravenous and gets upset waiting so I have him a snack. He's not overweight and seems genuinely hungry so I don't see why I shouldn't.

Surely it all depends and everyone is different. I have a 12 and 13 year old. They eat after school - anything they can find as they often play football at lunch break.
Supper always features here - cereal , flapjacks, fruit, crackers .
All of my children have snacked, they are all slim and healthy. We probably tend towards smaller portions rather than huge meals.
I work 13 hour shifts with one half hour break ( on a good day ). I am a big snack fan as a result , but fruit , a babybel etc rather than crisps or chocolate.
Surely it doesn't matter when people eat as long as the food they are eating is OK and keeping them energised.
Food can be tricky for people , best not to police it or be obsessive about food for children .

i started primary school in 84 and had snacks at play time/break through school. we didn’t drink much but looking back we’re probably a bit dehydrated on warm days!

I nursery nursed from 96 and we had snacks and water/juice back then in nurseries so it’s hardly a new thing. Busy kids in nursery( and school) needed drinks and a bit of a snack( fruit/veg sticks etc), also it was good down time and structure for them to sit at the table for ten minutes and regroup!

Tell that to my hangry 2 year old. There's no way he'd be able to go hours between meals and I struggle to see how the average active, growing toddler doesn't get hungry or is able to fit in all the calories they need without snacks.

I also don't think the logic necessarily works.

I think we've basically trained many kids to think that they need to feel "full" all the time, they don't realize it's fine to feel peckish and not eat right away.