If you have always been a healthy weight, what treats were allowed when you were a child?

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If you have always been a healthy weight, how were snacks, treats and desserts dealt with in your childhood?

I'm interested to know. What food was available? When and where did you eat it? Where was it stored? Who got to decide when it was ok to have a treat? Were treats always shared equally? Just generally interested to know the minutiae of your house rules.

I wasn't brought up with a healthy relationship with food and don't want to pass this on to my children. But so much of the discussion around these things centers around people who have changed their own snacking habits to lose weight. I'm looking to find out what habits set you up for a healthy relationship with treats from the start.

Toast for breakfast
Cooked hot lunch with pudding or cake
Small sandwich and fruit or cake for dinner
We had smaller portions than now {the dishes and plates were smaller)
We had chocolate or sweets as treats fairly often and extra fruit when we wanted but very little fried stuff and fizzy drinks were only on holiday.
Definitely never made to finish what was on the plate,

Early 90s.
We grew up eating utter crap tbh. Healthiest meal was probably spaghetti Bolognese which was just mince, jar of sauce and pasta. Parents just couldn’t cook. Microwave meals, beige oven stuff, golden nuggets for breakfast.

I have eaten healthy 5 a day type meals since I moved out 15 odd years ago. But go eat chocolate/ cake etc whenever I fancy.

I was never fat as a child or as an adult. So I have no idea what that says about healthy eating. I think the key was just portion size, I often didn’t like all the crap as a teenager so would just eat something like cheese on toast instead.
We were never made to finish any meals either

Grew up in the 80s and 90s, nothing much was limited, we had chocolates and crisps on demand, sugar and butter sandwiches, Nutella on bread every day for me as a treat as I liked it. We didn’t have fizzy drinks but had a lot of fried foods. But meals were home cooked and pretty healthy and always plentiful so maybe we just didn’t snack much. I find with my own dc if I fill them up with healthy meals they reach for the snacks less even when freely available

No health issues touch wood, 4 siblings, 3 of us are a healthy weight.

Brought up in the 70’s. Fairly healthy relationship with food, never been overweight. I do have a very sweet tooth though which I have to curb.

3 meals a day with dessert after lunch and dinner. might be a yoghurt, angel delight etc. Not allowed if we hadn’t eaten our main. Homemade pudding at weekend. Allowed 2 snacks a day and never more than 2 biscuits at one time. Plain biscuits only. Orange squash daily. We were allowed sweets at a Saturday lunchtime and crisps and lemonade on a Sunday night.

We did have some special things in the house such as Kit Kat’s/flakes but they were kept in a different tin and only my dm was allowed them!

Oh so a typical day as a child say 10 years would have been something like:

Breakfast : sugary cereal
Lunch: marmite sandwich, skips, sugary drink, wagen wheel.
Snack: dairlea dunker, ice lolly
Dinner: potato waffles, beans, sausage
Snacks: smarties yogurt! Club biscuits

I’m surprised we didn’t end up with rickets!

Also at secondary school went out for lunch and it was a sandwich, crisps and a large chocolate everyday. Or just chips from the canteen

We had pudding most days, chocolate mouse, angel delight, tinned fruit. Mostly home made food (fussy eaters) but always with veg. Sweets after supper, such as a tube of smarties. Lunch usually a ham sandwich and crisps. I was always a breakfast refuser. After school we were allowed 3 biscuits, such as pink wafers, a small cookie or a hobnob.

I was always a fussy eater and I feel full quite quickly and if I'm full I simply cannot force myself to eat anything.

My children are allowed as-lib fruit and they are allowed a snack mid-morning and mid-afternoon. They probably have a bag of crisps and 2 biscuits a day.

I'm 44 and have never been overweight.

My childhood diet was breakfast (cereal, toast, pancakes, occasionally bacon) then sandwiches, crisps and an apple for lunch. Cooked meal in evening (usually something reasonably healthy).

We only had dessert occasionally. I think I had unrestricted access to biscuit tin unless close to meal times (don't ruin your dinner!) and then usually had something at bed time like a kitkat or waggon wheel.

Other than the biscuit tin I don't think we really had snacks that I remember. Maybe choc ices in summer and extra treats at Christmas...

Healthy weight but my grandmother and mother have pretty disordered eating which has set me up for the same. Food was discussed in terms of "good" and "bad" and what we could have was restricted - no biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps, sugar - quite a long list. I was taught to write down everything I ate and count every calorie at a very early age. Any weight loss was praised even though I was not overweight and did a lot of competitive sport too. As @DisappointingAvocado mentions with her husband, many foods for me have the same "forbidden fruits" quality - I will buy food, eat it all in a binge and hide the evidence out of terrible shame.

Even now every conversation I have with my mother mentions food or weight and going out for meals usually entails talking about whether she has been "good" or not recently. My appearance is commented upon every time we meet. I do say I am not discussing it but that usually sparks an argument. I think my value is seen in what I weigh / what size clothes I wear still. Currently at the smaller end of the spectrum which would also attract criticism if we could meet for being too thin, which we cannot due to Covid restrictions at present.

I do not have children and in part am relieved because I would be terrified they'd end up with this awful relationship with food too even though I would do my very best to be balanced about it around them.

My best friend always had (she says) free access to chocolate, biscuits etc in her house growing up and gives her children free access too. They rarely go for the sweet stuff - she will have a square or two of chocolate and about two biscuits per day and her children will have perhaps a treat - sized chocolate bar or something a few times per week. They are al healthy weights. I feel very envious of such an easy relationship with food, I would love the same.

Born mid 50’s, so no supermarket/junk food/takeaways available locally. No car, walked everywhere.
All meals cooked from scratch. No freezer or microwave in those days. V little money for treats, so one small individual Mars bar would be cut into slices between four of us.
I used to get so hungry as a teenager, I would go into the bakers on the way home from school and buy the leftover buns for 1d each! When I left school at 18 I weighed 6 stone 12lbs and had a 20” waist.
I’m not advocating a complete return to such spartan living, but I think limiting ourselves to 3 healthy meals a day, cutting out the continual grazing on high calorie snacks, and increasing our exercise would be a good start. And in my day, eating in the street was frowned on - we ate privately at home, sitting at a table.

I like the idea of free access to snacks. But I can't imagine that it wouldn't lead to competition. Like the kids would feel that if they didn't eat things now, their siblings would have polished everything off when they wanted something later.

Maybe that says more about my upbringing though?

3 meals a day, pudding was a weekend thing
Lunch was usually a sandwich with a biscuit and fruit
Squash and cordial to drink, otherwise water and milk
Sweets or chocolate once a week
Snacks weren't a regular thing but if we were hungry then we could have a slice of toast/a crumpet or some fruit.

In my late teens/early adulthood I noticed that my mum had form for talking about food as 'little treats' and being a bit 'naughty', but I dont know if that was a product of social group. I quickly found it annoying and am now of the even stronger opinion that humans are not dogs so we don't need food as a treat.

I find it madness when we go out with DC and some mums have packed for an expedition up Everest to go to playgroup. You'd think that 2 year olds would die of starvation if they go an hour without a bag of cheesy organic veg puffs or a pouch of Ella's. DC eat well at meals and our philosophy is everything in moderation.

I’ve always been underweight, at times to the point of being concerning. My sisters were brought up with the same diet and were always a healthy weight.
We did baking every weekend and would take something we baked into school as part of lunch every day. It was flapjacks, sponge cake, brownies etc but the portion was small and the rest of the lunch was a sandwich and fruit.
After school we were allowed one biscuit or some fruit, but not a biscuit every day, maybe 2 days a week.
Very rarely had a proper “dessert” after dinner, ice cream etc were for special occasions, we might have yoghurt or fruit. We didn’t ever have crisps or fizzy drinks except at Christmas.

I was a 70s child and there were never any snacks in the house. No biscuits, chocolate, crisps, cake or fizzy drinks. As an adult I'm overweight and my brother is obese.

I was always slender until children and never even thought about dieting until after the kids

I grew up in 70s 80s and we had 3 proper meals a day. Home cooked. Usual had s pudding in the evening. Also usually home made.

Pocket money and free rein in sweet shop/ tuck shop. Fizzy drinks.

I think it's maybe that we didn't snack like people do now. And did a lot more exercise in day to day life.

Rationing as a child, so no in-between meal snacks. Porridge, toast or omelette (dried egg) for breakfast; cooked dinner(lunch) and pudding (home-made} midday; bread, butter, home-made cake for tea. Tea to drink, but orange squash in summer. Fruit in season. I remember when bananas came back; only available with a green ration book (under fives). I was a thin child, I remember my mother saying I looked like someone from Belsen, she would be tarred and feathered if she said it today.

Child of the 70s/80s I remember there being Angel delight for pudding n sundays and also Dream Topping, but other than that I simly don't recall there being much in the way of snacks or junk food. Both parents slim, busy teachers and Mum is vegetarian (though she cooked eat for us once or twice a week). I grew up on jacket potatoes with cheese and salad, beans on toast and simple meals. We did get lemonade from the milkman tho..I used to take the bottes back!
I used to get sweets on pocket money day (saturday) and did the same with my kids.. their choice if they ate them all at once or saved some.

While I cook a bigger range than Mum did, I'm not a foodie and nor is DH so we tend to eat simply and puddings are rare just because it never occurs to us. We always have some snacks and crisps in for anyone who wants them The children (now adults) are all slim. DD1 developed anorexia in her late teens due to multiple MH issues but is now much healthier after a lot of support.
I have a dreadful sweet tooth for actual sweets (got 2kg of sherbert pips for Xmas!) but it doesn't seem to affect my weight any..just keeps my dentist in business :/

@Meredithgrey1 do you remember how the conversations around after school snack went? Presumably you always would have wanted the biscuit not fruit. Was it just random that some days you were told yes and sometimes told no, eat some fruit?

Like this thread as I’ve thought lots about this aspect of parenting and want to make some changes.

I grew up with pretty balanced meals, lots of fruit and veg, but free access to crisps, biscuits, cheese, sugary squash and other high sugary and salty foods, unsupervised after age 11. Takeaway every Friday. Siblings and I have some bad food habits, I have USUALLY but not always managed to keep BMI under 25; sibling is overweight most of time.

@StillMedusa the using your own pocket money to buy sweets is an interesting idea. Means it is down to their own choices if siblings have different snacks saved.

We had very few treats growing up and our choice of drinks were water, milk, or freshly squeezed orange juice, I don't like milk or fruit juices so it was water for me, flavoured with cucumber or lime etc
Home cooked meals every night, with the occasional takeaway of fish and chips,fruit or yoghurt for desert with a proper desert on Sundays. We were never forced to finish everything on our plates either.
I'm a bit more liberal with snacks and drinks with our LO, but she's still not allowed daily treats. Fizzy drinks are not allowed

I was allowed to eat anything I wanted, at any time. I remember being hungry one night after bedtime and my mother made me lots and lots of hot buttered toast. The issue we had was that they tried to make me eat food when I didn’t want to, and wasn’t hungry, so I’d end up sneakily throwing it away. I think, for me knowing that food was always available and not restricted meant that I could take or leave it, I think it’s the opposite of the scarcity mindset.

I’m 40 and a size 6, I was a big 10 after having DC.

I think I was raised with a healthy attitude to food.

I knew my mum worked really hard and always cooked for us, even if i wasn't keen I would always eat it. As an adult I'm not remotely picky and like everything. Everything was homemade..

We didn't have things like crisps in the house but we were always allowed them if we went out for a picnic etc.

I wasn't encouraged to snack all the time, just three good sizes meals and maybe a small supper like some cereal of I needed it.

If we were going to have a treat like some sweets and a family movie night it was a big deal. We would choose them but it wasn't excessive like a massive bag of haribo, it was just one item and we would slice a snickers into little bits and put it in a special bowl.

If we went out for a meal we would get dressed up and it was special.

90’s kid here.

I credit my Mum with never obsessing over her weight or diets with my healthy attitude to food. My friend who has Mum’s who were openly on diets have obsessed over their weight from a young age, even though they were slim and heathy.

We had there healthy meals a day, a healthy snack after school, and in terms of treats maybe a biscuit with packed lunch, and a ‘treat’ after tea such as ice cream and biscuits.

I scoffed a LOT of treats as a teenager but as people say I think staying slim is a lot down to genes.

I was never made to finish off food when I was fully I have a lot of self control with food and I am able to stop eating when I am full or satisfied. I still eat healthy meals and don’t feel guilty for eating chocolate etc when I fancy.

We had no snacks in the house ever( 1960s). Coke and crisps was a rare treat maybe two or 3 times a year.

Looking at school photos we were all very skinny but I don’t remember being hungry.
Never had a take away except fish and chips on our holidays. Ate a lot of mince.

Things eased off a bit in the 70s with the introduction of Arctic Roll and Angel Delight but I think in general we ate to live rather than the other way round.