The snacking

[OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow]

Can someone please explain to me the snacking thing in UK? I keep seeing people talking about kids "constantly snacking". Is that exaggeration?

I am genuinely curious because I grew up with set (ish) meal times.
We had breakfast, snack (apple usually or similar), lunch, snack (yogurt and fruit or small roll with something) and dinner.
There was usually 3 hours between the meals.
I grew up outside of UK and this was normal and still is so it's mindboggling for me to see "we need to buy x packs of snacks because they are snacking nonstop".
And crisps are just for parties or movie nights

I am not dissing, it's just real curiousity about the differences.

Thanks!

Congratulations on your discipline
It's just a combination of boredom and being in the house with all the snacks constantly when normally we'd be out....safe...

I'm not really snacking. It's more like I am having one very long 26 course meal from morning till night.

Crisps are just for movie nights and parties nah couldn't do that, love a pack of tayto with my sandwich.

Fruit is not filling as a snack. If we fancy a bar of chocolate or a bag of crisps or something small we'll have it. What you've listed is common snacks people have between meals.

We have grown a snacking culture here, they do have it in other countries as well.
I'm guilty of it with my GC, even though sweets and fruit was a, luxury, because of wage levels erc.

But people are at home with a lot of food in. We are having to stock up and having masses of screen time.

Nothing wrong with snacking, as long as they still eat their meals.

Must remind myself to stop making cakes lol.

@Morgan12

Yeah I think it's quite weird as well tbh and I am from the UK.

People seem to think kids need constant feeding through the day now. My OH has 2 children and he would happily give them a snack less than an hour before dinner. I'd have been told to wait as dinner was on the way.

@Morgan12 🤣

Most British people are grazers - no offence.

@Morgan12 😂😂😂 I like that.

It's interesting to see the never expected differences between countries tbh. I get the extra snacking now on lockdown obviously.

I don't really get the snacking thing either. DH grazes constantly throughout the day and I just don't understand where he puts it all. I rarely want to eat between meals and it wouldn't occur to me to buy snack foods if he didn't keep adding them to the shopping list.

I don’t get it either. My children have never been offered snacks, just meals. I was the same.

Mine aren't allowed to snack except on fruit. And we are baking a cake every day at the moment, so have that for elevenses! If we have crisps in the house, they are for lunches only. no biscuits bought as they go within seconds.

But other than that, I've restricted snacks and time in the kitchen. Mealtimes are at fixed times. I have 5 kids at home atm, and need to have this or there would be carnage in the kitchen.

I'm in Spain, Spanish kids snack like they're getting paid for it. Fuet sticks. Cheese. Breadsticks. Sweets. Oreos. Popcorn.

We're buying snacks but rationing them out - handful of pringles with a sandwich, couple of homemade (metric fuckton of butter and sugar!) biscuits, bit of fuet with beer/cacaolat with a film etc. We're not grazing all day, I'd be sick!

Crisps just for movie nights and parties, what? Get in the naughty corner and think about what you’ve just said lady!

You had 2 snacks a day growing up, so you did snack....twice a day.

My dc are all under 5 so quite small still, they have 3 meals a day but don’t have a set snack time. If they ask for fruit/a biscuit/ whatever they can have it whenever they want. Some days they ask some days they don’t.

As for me and dh I’d we fancy something between meals we have it

I find this obsession with snacking odd too. From what I see on here it seems that parents never leave the house, even for short trips, without a bagful of snacks for their DC. Children can’t even be expected to get from school to home at the end of the school day without being met with a snack at the school gates. It’s no great surprise then that there is a problem with childhood obesity.

Crisps just for movie nights and parties, what? Get in the naughty corner and think about what you’ve just said lady!

😂

Mine aren't allowed to snack except on fruit. And we are baking a cake every day at the moment, so have that for elevenses!

What's the difference between elevenses and a snack?

Years ago I read a ridiculous book called French Women Don't Get Fat. She railed against snacking and then said she sometimes pops into a cafe for a croissant in the middle of the afternoon.

well maybe there isn't a difference! I'm just trying to stop random snacking where everyone wanders into the kitchen at different times several times a day making a mess and consuming unnecessary amounts of food, and have more social planned breaks in our work patterns where we sit down together and talk.

And baking is one of the activities I'm doing with my dd because we both enjoy it.

So I suppose that's the difference - it's not mindless random eating, but a social event. (and I like cake).

Where on earth are you getting enough flour to bake a cake every day?!! We haven’t been able to get any for weeks so can’t do any baking and it’s looking iffy for Yorkshire puddings this Sunday please don’t bulk buy flour to use for an ‘activity’ when people want bit just to cook normally with!

I was an au pair for a lovely, very health conscious mum in France 20 years ago and the kids lived on sugar. She was very disciplined wrt to food portions for herself but was also very active and is still fantastically fit and svelte. But honestly, I was a student in my early 20's (used to a diet of chocolate when necessary) and was horrified at the amount of sugar and processed food the kids ate. They had sweet cereal for breakfast, one would suck on a tube of condensed milk and the other on a bottle of chocolate milk. Then lunch was puree and poisson pané (fish squares), sweets if we went out and then goùter at 4: a piece of baguette with a bar of chocolate in, or a packet of barquette biscuits, each!

They have grown up slim and disciplined about food (I think this is cultural) but, having grown up in 80's rural Ireland I was horrified at the time but I think we have since caught up. My children could definitely give them a run for their money in the snacking olympics during this lockdown.

I also read that ridiculous book Curds and I think while they were mad snackers as kids, generally as adults they are much, much more disciplined. I think other nationalities, despite aging and slowing metabolism, just keep on snackin'!

Thing is every night is currently a movie night isn’t it...

please don’t bulk buy flour to use for an ‘activity

If you eat the cake it's just cooking pet. Not like she's making the world's largest playdough mansion. Am sorry about your Yorkshire's but there's no need to be sour.

Where are you from OP? I've travelled a fair bit and never been anywhere without a "snacking culture". I would say it's a generational thing as much as anything.

I'm not really snacking. It's more like I am having one very long 26 course meal from morning till night.

I don't know about you but yesterday I had a thimble of water, a spoonful of quinoa and a sniff of a lettuce leaf and I'm still STUFFED. I was going to have a lick of an ice cube there for dinner but just can't face it!

(that's usually how these threads end up, right?)