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

[aapple]

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.

I often hear people say their Christmas and Easter chocolate etc. wasn't rationed. I wonder if people just received less back then? No matter what you say, it is ridiculous how many Easter eggs etc. get bought by relatives nowadays. If you were to eat them in a balanced way, you'd be set for the year. I can't imagine kids really saving their chocolate for months. I bet selection boxes and eggs were smaller back in the day too!

We used to get two Easter eggs each, one from our parents and one from our aunt. We made them last for weeks. Similarly we got one selection box at Christmas. We didn’t get chocolate or sweets any other time. But my mum did bake, and we had cake and or biscuits most days.

@aapple

Thanks for all the replies. A lot of similarities in what everyone is saying. I like the ideas of:

Spending your own pocket money on food, if you want your own stash.
Two biscuit serving size.
No sweets before lunch.
Puddings homemade, at weekends.
Eating at the table.

I'm not sure I'm brave enough for free access to all food. Fruit, toast, cheese, yoghurt etc. I'm fine with. But I think chocolate, biscuits, crisps will have to be asked for. Mostly I'm not sure that us adults could model the required discipline. Maybe I could have a biscuit tin with just plain malted milks or something.

I would say the big takeaway (if you'll pardon the pun) from this thread is how few people who are now adults, of a healthy weight, in their late 30s+ ate snacks - not just 'had access to' (I think restricting access to food is weird) but just didn't eat or expect them.

I don't have children, but I see parents practically pushing food on kids all the time, and I think that's unhealthy and sets up poor relationships with food.

Being a bit hungry sometimes (in advance of the next meal) is not a bad thing.

We never had a huge amount of Christmas or Easter chocolate.
Standard at Xmas would have been a chocolate Santa and chocolate coins in stockings each, plus a box of something like quality streets that were shared by whole family.
Standard Easter chocolate was a chocolate bunny plus a bowl of mini eggs from Easter hunt.
So not months and months worth of chocolate IMO

We never had snacks at home, ie no bags of crisps or chocolate bars.

Sometimes there would be biscuits but not often.

We played out, were always pretty active.

I was always skinny, my sister has always been overweight.

In our forties now and I'm a 'normal' weight and she's bigger, but has a better and much healthier diet than I do.

Her kids have a better diet than mine and one is skinny, one is chunky.

I have two skinny kids and a chunky one. The skinniest eats the most.

It's not all white the diet. People are just different sizes.

Not all about the diet that should say!

Grew up in the 60s. Was a healthy weight until lockdown, slightly overweight now (not enough exercise).

What food was available? : Breakfast, lunch, a sitdown snack, and dinner were our meals. Breakfast would be bread or toast and cheese/marmalade, sometimes yoghurt. The sitdown snack might be something like a slice of cake or a bowl of yoghurt with half a banana. Dinner would be cheap meat or fish with boiled spuds. Drink was milk or tap water, sometimes a single glass of orange juice (rationed because of cost).

Outside of these mealtimes there were no snacks. I did have pocket money from age 6, which I could spend on sweets- my weekly allowance in primary was just enough to buy one bag of sweets a week. My parents did not buy me treats when we went shopping. Crisps and similar were not kept in the house and were considered party foods, not something you'd have on a normal day.

When and where did you eat it? Sitting down at the table as a family, sometimes afternoon snack in the garden.

Where was it stored? In the kitchen fridge and cupboard.

Who got to decide when it was ok to have a treat? Parents. Money was limited and they were in charge of budgeting. We never had a problem with this.

Were treats always shared equally? Yes, to the point where I still cut up a piece of cake with millimetre precision. There were 6 of us in the family so slices would not be very large.

We did, however, accept that our mum, who had some health problems was sometimes allowed her own snacks, e.g. a small piece of chocolate and that these weren't part of the general share-out. And as I said, we had pocket money.

There was never a sense of food being naughty or something to be used as a reward. We accepted that money was limited but I don't remember it as a subject of tension when I grew up.

Always been a healthy weight.
We had to ask for a biscuit or chocolate treat. I think we'd have 2 at most, to dunk in our cups of tea. Friday night I'd be allowed to pick penny sweets.
I remember being round a friends' house and she was asking for a third packet of crisps (she wasn't allowed)! I'd only ever have one packet of crisps a day.

We got our pocket money on a Saturday, and that was spent on sweets (only 10p or 25p worth). My dad bought us one pack of crisps each a week after he'd done the big shop.

There was rarely fizzy drink in the house, a small number of biscuits (which we had to ask to eat, and when the pack ran out it wasn't topped up until the next big shop). My parents never bought the more sugary cereals (like coco pops) and we never had puddings after dinner. Occasional home made cakes, but not often. Snacks were fruit or crackers and cheese.

Meals were cooked from scratch with plenty of veg, with very rare takeaways. We were allowed to pick out anything we didn't like, but our parents wouldn't have dreamed of catering to their children's tastes - they just cooked what they wanted to eat, and that's what they gave us. I wouldn't say our diet was super-healthy as it was the 80s and lots of our meals were brown (as seemed to be the norm then).

I've spent my entire adult life between the low end and the upper middle of the 'healthy' BMI range. I dont always eat healthily as an adult (maybe 80% of the time), but the habits from childhood have definitely stuck to a certain extent.

And yes, treats were shared fairly.

I’ve remembered we used to have to ask for biscuits or crisps too

And ‘stealing’ them was very much a telling off.

I’m not sure they were limited for health reasons though...I think it was more “you will spoil your dinner” and they were expensive

1970s. 3 meals a day with water. Usually 2 of them were hot. I could have something before bed as well. We never had dessert and we always sat at the table. A bag of buttons once a week from my DF and lots of fruit.

However, I still had an unhealthy relationship to food in my 20s and used to actively keep it artificially low to keep any weight on.

@aapple

I often hear people say their Christmas and Easter chocolate etc. wasn't rationed. I wonder if people just received less back then? No matter what you say, it is ridiculous how many Easter eggs etc. get bought by relatives nowadays. If you were to eat them in a balanced way, you'd be set for the year. I can't imagine kids really saving their chocolate for months. I bet selection boxes and eggs were smaller back in the day too!

My Easter and Christmas chocolate wasn't rationed - we are the lot in one go, pretty much! I don't know if it was less than kids get now but it was a lot... Xmas selection boxes were enormous.

But I don't think two days a year will be what determines an adult's eating habits. It's more about the day to day.

To this day, I'm a bit shocked if I see that someone has coco pops in the house.

To this day, I'm a bit shocked if I see that someone has coco pops in the house.

Me too! We definitely weren’t allowed coco pops and I’d be aghast at friends houses if they were allowed them.

My mum was from a farming family and she really didn’t and still doesn’t, like fake food. I don’t think she’s ever eaten a pizza in her whole life and she’s a slim, healthy 79 year old now!

Forgot to answer these:

When and where did you eat it? Meals at the kitchen table, snacks in the living room. Food was never taken upstairs.

Where was it stored?In the kitchen cupboard.

70's. Every day when I came home from school I had a jam donut and a pink of full fat milk 😮

For breakfast always had sugary cereal with several added spoons of sugar.
For lunch standard school fare, main meal and pudding.
For dinner home made meal, always fab, Italian mum, so good healthy food. Always had a desert.

I think today's issues are all due to convenience food. It's not that previous generations ate less, but they ate more basic food. We also moved a lot more. Walked to school, and were out of the house all afternoon, until dinner time.

I was a very healthy weight until my 50s. Growing up in the 70s, 3 meals a day, possibly one biscuit mid morning, always had a pudding at lunch and tea which was generally stewed fruit and custard/cream or one pice of homemade cake.One pice of dark chocolate on Saturdays, one small packet of sweets on Sunday. All food was homemade, ready meals didn’t really exist, the only takeaway was occasional fish and chips, one portion of chips between 5 of us. Loads of veg, a chicken really did last four days despite the MN contempt for this practice, they were expensive so most of your plate was veg most of it was homegrown. My parents were adults during wartime so my Mum had learnt to stretch food, she used to put grated carrot in homemade steamed puddings so they didn’t require as much sugar.
We did have to eat what was on our plates but portions weren’t anything like the size children get today and I don’t remember absolutely hating anything although I obviously had favourites.

80s
Dessert only after Sunday dinner
One packet of sweets/lolly/choc bar on a Friday after school or something from the sweetie jar at home - (which was normally things given by grandparents or aunties)
Lots of fruit
Veg with meals
Home made packed lunches
No sugary cereal - just things like weetsbix, porridge, shreddies
Nuts/trail mix snack
Fizzy drink restricted to weekends

Lots of walking encouraged and physical hobbies (gymnastics/dancing). I joined the gym my mum went to at 15 and we used to go together on a Sunday. We also used to road run together.

We were allowed pretty much unlimited access to snacks, but we'd rarely eat more than a packet of crisps or babybel

We'd have 3 meals a day. Plus pudding would be homemade biscuits, cake or flapjacks. Dinner was always homemade, plenty of veg and my mum was an excellent cook. We always ate dinner together as a 4 and normally helping with the cooking

Once a week we went to the sweet shop and got 20p sweets or a chocolate bar of our choice

Tbh I don't remember any emphasis ever being put on treats. I literally don't ever remember my parents mentioning sweets or chocolate. My parents never openly dieted or made any negative comments about food.

Tbh I think my mums cooking was so good that I didn't really want anything else. Dinner times were always a big deal, sort of the focus of the day really and so I was happy to wait for dinner if I was hungry most days. I think because there was no mystery or excitement around chocolate or biscuits, I never really ate them. Even at Christmas or Easter it might take me month to finish the chocolate, but my parents would have let us finish it all that day.

We were always active as well. Always playing out or going for walks, to the park, bike rides everyday. We'd never have takeaways or McDonald's or anything. Being active was just natural. I was also quite a hyperactive child so that probably helped!

I am a healthy weight but also a secret eater and addicted to sugar.
One of my siblings eats vwey healthily.
One hardly eats.
The other over eats.

As kids we had 3 meals a day. Cereal, packed lunch and oven food mostly. Packed lunch was always a brown bread cheese sandwich, packet of hula hoops, penguin biscuit, apple and orange squash. We only had squash at mealtimes and never water, and I think I was dehydrated a lot.
We had dessert every evening. Usually fruit or yoghurt but sometimes freezer food or a crumble.
2 biscuits after school, and sweets on a Saturday.
We were not allowed any other treats at all. We could eat fruit if we were hungry between meals. Bread and butter on the table at every meal.
My parents' cooking was dire and I grew up thinking I hated all food.
Now I eat healthy meals but snack all the time on rubbish.

70s/80s - my mother was a little bit overweight and OBSESSED with her diet, she was always fasting or being good or having half a potato on her plate or something, but her weight didn't change much. She controlled everything very, very tightly - there were biscuits and chocolate etc in the house, we had two "surprise nights" a week where my stepdad would bring us a small chocolate bar, and we were allowed fizzy pop on a Sunday. She made cakes all the time for my older siblings, but everything was counted and monitored and comments made if you had more than 2 biscuits, or another piece of cake etc.

All food was wholesome and from the health food shop in that 80s way - dry tasting wholemeal bread, almost-plastic low fat margarine, no sugar cereals, nut burgers, plenty of marrow and spinach etc.

The moment I had pocket money I started finding ways of getting extra sweets past her, so I could sneak up to my room and eat them with no snidey remarks, whilst burying myself in a book. I once hid a whole loaf of white bread (mothers pride, heaven) and a jar of marmalade, and in my brothers room I found a stash of cupcake boxes so I know he did the same.

When we each left home we both got quite fat quite quickly, having the freedom to choose and buy our own food and eat the bad stuff with no limits - no amount of sugar satiated us.

My DB is now 50, and frighteningly thin and underweight having developed an eating disorder when he worked obsessively to lose his extra 3 stone 15 years ago. I am 48, 5 stone overweight and unable to curb my sugar habit.

We were poor. No treats, no takeaways. Lots of veg, and potatoes - very little meat, no pasta, sometimes rice (maybe once a month with curried vegetables).

Portions were much smaller - a meal may be a sausage - singular, two for dad, a potato and a pile of cabbage with gravy (bisto and cornflour).

Occasional pudding on a Sunday - usually something like rice pudding, bread and butter pudding (not much butter!) or plain sponge cake with jam.

It was not much fun. But it meant I had to really think about goodies for my kids, because my instinct was to just let them have all the stuff I didn't - and that is not good either.

I was born in 92. Always been a healthy weight growing up, despite my mum being a serial yo-yo dieter and overweight.

I don't remember having too many snacks growing up if i'm honest, was the usual 3 meals, and some sweets & treats at the weekend. Rarely had take aways, they were just for special occasions - i.e new year or something.

Plus, I think school dinners were amazing!! We always got a nice hot dinner, followed by a yummy hot pudding with custard or something. As a kid that did me just fine for my sweet tooth.

It was only when I moved out, got a job and was able to buy all the crap food that i wanted when I initially put on weight.

I think this sums it up: "Crisps and similar were not kept in the house and were considered party foods, not something you'd have on a normal day."

Sweets were on a Saturday, bought with pocket money. Crisps were one bag on a Friday. Other treats were only really on special occasions (holidays, christmsas).

80s-90s kid in America. No dessert unless we cleared our vegetables (or sometimes the entire plate). Dinner times normally had healthy enough home cooked meals (stir fries, spaghetti with sauce, roast chicken legs, stuff like carrot sticks and sliced cucumbers for the phase when we didn't like any cooked vegetables). We ate together at a table in the kitchen, or in the dining room. It was only as a teenager, when our schedules got crazy, that we ate more in front of the television.

Lunch as a little kid was a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread (lots of added sugars). Or a salami and cheese sandwich. As a teenager, I went through a badly-thought-out vegetarian phase, and ate tater tots every day from the school cafeteria. Our breakfast was almost always a sugary cereal (Coco Pops, the technicolour Froot Loops, cinnamon toast crunch, golden Graham's, instant flavoured oatmeal). On the weekends, there was sometimes enough time to have something like pancakes or bacon and eggs instead. I had arguments with my mother over an acceptable number of cookies. I hated almost all fruit.

Drinks with meals were always fruit juice, milk, or (as a teen) soda pop. Same story if we went out to eat: soda, especially, was served in a huge cup and constantly topped up a la TGI's in the UK. As teens, my brother and I used to be able to split a 24-pack of 12-oz cans of normal Coke between us, and have it cleared within a few days. Even now, drinking water with my meal is a conscious rather than a reflexive decision.

I would love to have unlimited snacky snacks in my house, and have seen the literature supporting that approach, but my DDs both have nervous breakdowns if I bring a sugary cereal into the house and then try to limit its intake to only breakfast. When we have big tubs of chocolate in the house from Halloween and Christmas, there is a constant cycle of binge (me) and arguments about getting more (them). I feel unable to give them chocolate advent calendars because they'd tear through all of the doors in a single day. I would bring more Nutella and crisps and biscoff and chocolate bars and crisps into the house except there's no "off" switch on any of us when it comes to these things.

So, we rarely buy soda except for birthdays or the occasional random weekend. I pass over the sugary cereals and go for Weetabix and porridge oats, and let them add a bit of honey or a syrup. My DDs like fruit, so if they're hungry between meals, I send them to the fruit bowl.

I am overweight but not yet BMI-obese. My husband has been overweight in his 20s but managed to return to a healthy weight and keep it there through eating a bit more healthfully and exercising. My 7 year old DD is a very high percentile for weight, compared with her height, and it shows during periods when her physical activity slows down (such as this winter). The three year old DD appears to be in proportion. We are all on the tall side.