Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

Me and my son get through 2 punnets of grapes in a week plus strawberries, easy peelers, apples, bananas, and other snacks. I agree you're the obviously not buying enough food for the whole family.

Its a complete myth that children turn into overweight gluttons because their parents dont want them or dont allow them to eat their way through packets and packets of processed calorie dense snacks all the live long day

We know that children largely replicate the eating habits of their parents and family. Fat children come from fat households, its that simple.

Nothing should be 'banned' or labeled as 'unhealthy' as such, but just allowing mindless eating is just setting kids up to form bad habits. Children that come from households where its largely whole foods, cooked at home rather than snacky pre made stuff, with a wide variety of foods, lots and lots of veg, tend to have better diets. Its not foolproof, outliers like ND and other issues that cause overeating will affect that, but largely the case.

We’re on £200 per week for a family of four plus dog so that’s impressive

Didn't we have this thread last week??

Ordering tons of expensive fresh fruit, then the op's wondering why she's spent so much??

I agree. We have fish fingers one evening a week and pizza another evening (along with freezer fries or pasta and veg/salad), as my kids are fussy eaters. Those meals are inexpensive compared to the other meals where I cook from scratch. It's usually buying good quality meat/protein that pushes the cost up. Salmon is £8-9 to buy enough to feed our family, whereas fish fingers are £3-4 and ready-made pizza around £5-6. When we make pizza, that is expensive as we have to buy passata, grated mozzarella and toppings.

But they don’t know it’s hidden.

Hiding food sounds like a bad idea to me as you end up making it a forbidden food that they’ll eat as soon as it’s in sight.

I cook from scratch - I find that costs more than fish fingers etc so I disagree. Making DD’s birthday cake was far more for ingredients than buying a shop bought cake.

Those are very treat snacks- snacks in our house were: apples, bananas, little oranges, carrots, weetabix, toast with peanut butter, jam, marmite. Noodles, oven chips, eggs, cheese for starving teens. If they could be bothered to cook them. But even plain ordinary food is horribly expensive these days.

Option 1: lockable cupboard and dole them out daily

Option 2: make the meals a bit bigger and don't do snacks at all. Nobody HAS to eat between meals.

Option 3: Give each dc some money to buy their own snacks weekly

Option 4: Go on as you are and leave them to decide for themselves if they want to spend half the week with no snacks.

I’m not sure you’re buying enough, the fruit you mentioned for 5 of us would only last a couple of days.
What I’ve started doing is having snacks in the cupboards that the children can help themselves to, then a locked little cabinet for the snacks that they can’t.
Our shopping bill is approx £120 pw, I was finding I’d put the shopping away and within 2 days the stuff for the packed lunches ie crisps would have all been eaten, then I would replace them at another shop 2 days later and the same thing would happen, which would bump up the shopping bill massively because even if I only went for one item, I’d pick up more….
Now crisps, little cookie packs, dried fruit etc get put in the locked cupboard and in the normal cupboard they help themselves to, they have crackers, nuts and they have a fruit bowl that always has apples, easy peel oranges and bananas.
I only buy 3 punnets of soft fruit, 1 grapes for the fridge, once they have gone I don’t buy anymore, they know to attack the fruit bowl once the more yummy soft fruit has gone. We easily get through 3 bags of apples, 2 bags of oranges and 2 bunches of bananas in a week.

Your 5 a day is supposed to be more veg so no reason why you can’t only have 1 portion of fruit a day and juice counts as does tinned fruit and dried. People obsess far too much.

Op your snacks sound a bit expensive and too processed. I’d just get a sack of nice apples, bananas, some whole juice, sack of carrots, some digestives, nuts and cheese oatcakes . They’ll slow it down, you’ll pay less and they’ll fill up more.

We eat more than 5 a day and I only buy apples , bananas, cherry tomatoes, carrots and whatever is in season for a treat to snack on as regards fruit/ veg. We pick it up hugely in meals.

And Im quite perplexed at posters who are encouraging or not curbing this mindless eating, never mind that its a box of fruit, doesnt make a difference what it is, habits are formed in childhood, it wont stay at fruit it will move on to more calorie dense food as they get older and mix with others who mindlessly eat their way through crisps and cakes and whatnot

Same. Big meals, no snacks. Was never overweight and have never been in my adult life. Now 54. Mum would always say no picking you’ll ruin your dinner! There is now scientific evidence ( Zoe) that snacking within an hour or so of next meal, means your insulin response to the main meal is impaired. So mum was right!

I've just done a shop and as far as fruit goes I have hoightvthe following for a family of 4.
2 x raspberries
2 x strawberries
2 x blueberries
1 watermelon
9 bananas
4 apples
4 pears
6 kiwi
1 punnet of plums
This will all be eaten over the next week but I will probably top up mid week.

Other snacks bought are
12 pck crisps
Scones
Crumpets
Houmous
Pitta
Greek yogurt

I think you need to adjust your expectations a bit OP.

Goodness someone on here even keeps the biscuits just for themselves and either doesnr share with their own kids or controls what’s allowed.

Hand up, that was me 😂. But it's not because I'm being mean or not sharing, it's because we all have the things that we like in this house, and we tend to stick to our own favourites rather than eat each other's indiscriminately. So the kids don't eat my biscuits, but they do like a hot chocolate with marshmallows instead. One of my kids likes Happy Hippos, so they'll have one of those from a box whenever we're having chocolate. The other one prefers chocolate buttons so has a handful of those. One child likes ice lollies best, the other one prefers a scoop of ice cream. I don't deliberately deprive them!

Well we werent poor, just average working class. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner. we were never hungry and wanting.

I was overweight as a child! Mum liked big portions

Im just saying that lacking snacks is not rationing, harmful, or indicative of not having enough money, they're just not necessary.

We have one from Lidl. I must get it out again. Thanks for the reminder!

I bought a plug in air popcorn machine from the supermarket for less than £20 as a gift for my daughter. I got huge sack of popping corn to go with it. It's lasted a year and the kids snack on plain popcorn non stop. Sometimes the add a bit of salt or a shake on flavour. Its turned out to be very cheap and fairly healthy. Perfectly safe for my 10 year old to use herself too.

Well the fruit you have bought barely equates to 4 portions per person so assuming your 5 a day is 3 veg 2 fruit that's only 2 days of fruit.

Agree.
Family of 4 here and my weekly order starts with 10 bananas, 10 clementines, 8 apples, 4 kiwis and then an additional rotation of either a punnet of strawberries, grapes, blueberries or a whole melon or pineapple.
If four people eat 2 items per day, thats 56 pieces of fruit per week!

Same for me unless I went out in the forest to pick blueberries- then my mum made a cake. But I love my dessert, and so do my children:).

Lol

Wow! My online shop from Tesco s about £60 - £65 a week just for me - although that ncludes a bottle of wine, lots of fresh fruit and any household stuff I might need. My nephew (also solo) spends £75 a fortnight for himself and two cats although he does buy other bits on top of his weekly online order.

£100 for a family doesnt sound much to me.

For a family of 5 eating one pack a day, every day, 6 x 6 packs would be enough, or alternatively a 24 pack and a 12 pack - written like that it does seem a lot of crisps though. 😃
I'm hoping raw catguts is a typo and it's raw carrots? 😆