The constant feeding / snacking of children

I think the op was referring to kids who are fed non stop donughts and pasties to be fair...not the odd choccie biccie here and there

I think it's genetic. We have always been a family that eats healthy, homemade food from scratch and exercises/active lifestyle BUT we also have healthy appetites. My mum likes her food. I do. My kids do. Unfortunately it means we have a tendency to put on weight....food calls to us (both healthy food and unhealthy food ☹️

I'm not against snacking per se....as sometimes kids do get hungry between meals but when mine were little I'd bring things like cheese babybells, fruit and wholegrain crackers....its much healthier and they behave better instead of filling them up with sugar.

My DC eat a huge amount. 3 home cooked meals a day but also constant bowls of cereal, bagels, fruit plus occasional junk. They are both competing athletes, DS (16) runs 60km a week, DD (14) does pentathlons. They are slim and strong. It’s not the constant grazing that’s an issue - it’s what they are eating and calories in vs calories out. If they do a lot of sport they do need adequate nutrition.

I wasn't given any snacks apart from a bag of cheese and onion crisps once a week after swimming , then egg and bacon for dinner.

I notice this with myself. If I eat rubbishy snacks, I'm just having a meal for the sake of it.

You never ever had sweets or ice-cream or cakes or lemonade or buns in your entire childhood... 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I don’t judge what other people do, especially as I don’t see their whole day/week. As a whole though, I have noticed a lot of unhealthy processed snacks being given to children on the go. I am surprised how many people think crisps are a snack or part of a meal instead of a “treat”. Something I’ve noticed with our primary is that all the kids are pretty slim up until year 4 and then they seem to start getting bigger? By year 6, half the year is very overweight (aka struggling to get up off the floor after assembly). But you don’t see that in the younger years for some reason.

Not allowed 🤣🤣🤣

Children graze. They don’t usually do bigger meals, they eat little and often which compliments their lifestyle. They always require fueling. I have an 11 year old who grazes. He grazes healthily but a large sit down meal would outface him because he does get bored (ADHD) and takes ages to eat and not much. He’s always been this way. He is athletic and does all kinds of sports. Grazing alone, he eats far more than I do in a day but he probably burns more calories than I do. We still take food bags out with us so he can snack because he gets cranky.

Allowed by whom? Presumably the adult has capacity and is able to choose her own food shopping, you may not like her choices but booked asking you to eat it.

And who would decide what “healthy” looked like? I’ve seen everything from cereal, fruit to crumpets demonised just on this thread alone. There are some very skewed ideas of what’s healthy eating looks like.

Urgh so judgemental you do not know what’s going on for those kids. Maybe that was their treat for the whole week!? Maybe that the only food they eat!? Maybe keep your nose out and if you don’t approve don’t do it for your kids!?

Thank god it wasn't just me!! 😭 🤣🤣

For starters, I still remember being given a glass of dilute orange squash and a biscuit when I was a toddler at the mum's and toddler group I attended.

I remember having 11ses at my grandparents house after they picked me up from nursery usually a glass of milk/squash and a biscuit (shock horror my nan had a biscuit tin 😱). Obviously yes we did have the standard 3 (home cooked from scratch) meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner. However...I also as a kid used to have supper which was often a slice of bread and butter.

Oh and we absolutely used to pop into the sweet shop on the way home from school to buy a 10p mix of sweets!

My packed lunches were made up of a sandwich, a packet of crisps (the horror!), usually some kind of cake bar and a carton of juice.

Oh and at secondary school not only did we have a vending machine containing all manner of snacks and pop the canteen used to open during break times and you could purchase a chip butty for 50p! Or a burger!! 👀

And yet....there wasn't a child obesity crisis?

Granted it was never a free for all and we didn't have just unlimited access. If you wanted a snack you asked permission and there were plenty of times I would be told "no, you can't because you'll spoil your dinner!". So maybe that's one thing that does differ these days?

The main real change I can see between kids now and my life back then is the fact as kids we were far far far more active. If you weren't going out on your bike for a bike ride, or having a kick around in the field , you'd be in the back garden playing out. And you walked EVERYWHERE!! I can count the amount of times my parents gave me a lift somewhere on one hand 🤣 And all of us did swimming lessons and the treat after swimming was a Saturday chippy.

Oh and being grounded and stuck in your room inside was actually genuinely a punishment to us 😬😳

Tbh I was brought up with the mentality of a)you eat what you're given and b)you eat all of it cos there are children starving in Africa. Tbh that was obviously passed down from my grandparents generation who lived through rationing so damn right you didn't waste food (although that in itself I felt led to disordered eating thats taken a life time to adjust to and learn to eat until satisfied not bursting full out of guilt).

This should not be allowed. Every supermarket shop should contain a certain percentage of healthy food, fresh fruit and veg etc. Only buying junk food should not be allowed.

And the terrible state of many kids' teeth...!

Slightly off topic but I popped out to Tesco during my lunch break to get stuff for dinner. Self check. The woman in front of me had a massive shop of entirely packet products. Boxed pizzas, frozen chips, packets of processed meat, squash and pop, kids crisps like monster munch, chocolate kids biscuits like penguins and clubs, everything was processed and in a packet. Not a single item of fresh food in her shop or any kind of ingredients for cooking. She clearly had children as much of her shop was child friendly snacks. The snack pandemic must be related to this - eating fake processed food is never going to fill you up?

The trouble with snacking is it takes the edge off your appetite.
if you snack a lot, you are never actually really really hungry when you sit down for your meal.
I noticed this a lot with my grandson, who seems to be constantly snacking and I don’t think he’s ever felt proper hunger in his life.

More likely the parents didn’t have / want to spend the extra money on something they knew he wouldn’t eat and would waste and then still be hungry

Coming home from school and going for a swimming lesson DC would get a snack, usually a sandwich and yes some crisps (won't eat fruit) and then dinner when home.

But yes I do agree that some parents do seem a need to constantly feed DC; in waiting rooms, bus, instantly when picking up from school, in prams. It's all just a temporary distraction, usually while on a screen.

If you set a precedent doing this for all 'boring' situations, it becomes an expected habit and not a good one.

It's th same home with these cases and I've seen it all too often, kids being allowed to take a family size bag of crisps, 2L bottle of coke, packets of biscuits upstairs to eat having alrwady had dinner.

I'm no fun killer but DC eat downstairs, ask politely for snacks, we know what they're consuming.

It is not that reasonable snacking that is the problem.
But what sort of unhealthy food they are eating. You type of good, balanced snacks are ideal.
Well done

I’m glad reading and playing works for your 4 year old. My 18m year old rips the books out of my hand and throws them on the floor after the first one. Toy cars keeps him entertained for about 5 minutes. I walk laps round the pool with him for another 10-15 minutes. Still another 10 minutes to fill - some snacks works perfectly. Seeing as he doesn’t throw them on the floor I’d assume he’s hungry. So what’s wrong with feeding him there to buy some quiet time instead of feeding him at home???

The last made on this post made me laugh!!

63 here. Only ever got chocolate bars at Christmas, crisps on a Saturday night.
Yet my late MIL was ALWAYS shoving food at my DD. Awful.

Yeah I’ve never made more than one meal at night. Everyone gets to contribute to the menu for the week and I don’t purposely cook food that they don’t like, but I’m not doing 4 different meals. I’d hope the food isn’t dull or repetitive though.