Snacking through the day

[mauvish]

I'm a bit baffled by the fact that so many people seem to feel that children need to be snacking between meals.

OK, I know you're all going to say that your kid gets really hungry/hangry/sleepy etc without, but hear me out first!

When I was a kid (in the 1960s) it was unheard of for children to snack between meals (at school at any rate - there was literally nothing available to snack on; or in my home; or in my friends' homes). We had breakfast, dinner, tea; maybe a small snack at bedtime, although there was school milk of course. It wasn't what you'd nowadays consider a healthy diet either -
1, Breakfast before school - a bowl of sugary processed cereal, full fat milk, toast with butter, maybe jam (or marmite, yum!)
2 Home for dinner (or lunch but no-one was that posh!) - usually something light, breadbased, a sandwich or baked beans/scrambled eggs/spaghetti hoops etc with toast. A piece of fruit and a biscuit (rich tea, malted milk, chocolate bourbon if my mum was feeling generous).
3 Tea - usually about 6-6.30. Stew, or a meat pie, maybe sausages, with potatoes and one overboiled veg; or maybe a macaroni bake. Pudding might be another pie, or crumble, with custard; or maybe stewed fruit (more custard) or a piece of home made cake.
A glass of milk at bedtime (which I always poured down the sink).
This was pretty much the eating pattern for everyone I knew.
It wasn't until I hit my teens that I started needing a snack on getting home from school.
If we ever had a packet of crisps, it was a small packet and shared between the 3 of us children! Sweets usually came loose in a paper bag bought once weekly and doled out occasionally as treats/rewards.
We walked to school twice a day usually not very far as you went to your catchment area school, there was no choice but I knew no-one who arrived by car.

And virtually no-one was obese, which is more than can be said for nowadays.

So I genuinely don't understand why the need for primary school children to snack all the time if they are having meals as well. Yes, I know they say they are hungry, but we all know that we can feel "hungry" without really needing food, we just want to nibble on something nice! (I've just had some easter egg to prove the point!!)

I am not asking this to challenge. I know all children are different and some will NEED (not want) to eat more than others. But I would like to try to understand why snacking is such a big thing now.

I reckon that - for the most part - the calories kids eat today are probably similar to those eaten in our childhood. Yes, I know there are a lot more overweight kids today (probably largely to do with a more sedentary lifestyle, as well as diet) but I’m talking in general terms.

For example, I had three very hearty meals (perhaps sometimes too hearty… which I was made to eat) a day in childhood and very few snacks if I remember rightly. My young kids eat what looks like Michelin-sized portions on the plate sometimes but have more healthy snacks between meals. And a pud with custard like you had is prob worth a few snacks. But it depends what kids are eating, of course. I think snacking is a good thing if it’s gets kids eating more fruit, for example, or calcium through dairy. But I agree that it’s not going to help the obesity problem if it’s always a pack of Doritos or something similar. I eat crisps or chocolate - sometimes both - nearly every day and it’s a habit I’d love to break personally.

In "their" day they used to throw rubbish / household waste off the cliff and let kids play on uncapped mineshafts.
Kids also smoked pipes. No seat belts.

Would much rather today's occasional hobnob than any of the "yesteryear" living standards.

Snacking may be our downfall but I am pleased with the progress our country has made since the "good ol days"

I'm with you OP.

You might have school milk mid-morning, or a glass of squash and a Rich Tea biscuit at home, and after school mid-afternoon maybe an apple or another piece of fruit. Glass of milk before bed.

People got their pay packets in cash on Fridays, so pocket money was doled out on the Friday night so you could spend it on Saturday morning on a comic and a few loose sweets, blackjacks or those spaceship things with sherbet in them.

That was it.

We were used to the sensation of feeling hungry before meals. I distinctly remember the words: "No, you'll spoil your appetite for dinner". Somehow I don't think kids get told that any more.

I grew up in the 70s and always had fruit at school break time, apiece if home made cake or a biscuit when I got in from school and a glass of milk and a biscuit before bed. I was a skinny little thing and we did spend lots of time outdoors both in school time and at home. There was less sitting at desks in primary school and much more time dancing, playing games, doing P.E. etc, as the curriculum was much less rigid.

DS 10 likes to snack and if i let him have crisps and cakes as often as hed like then he would be overweight.

He has a bag of crisps at lunch and a sandwich. Then at home, i might give him the odd belvita bar if i have them in (not often), but he does have a bit of toast after football practice. Or cucumber or tomatoes. But generally not snack food.

He deffo eats more than his sister ever has.

Ha, a bit late for that, I'm not feeding any children these days!

To those of you who are vaulting onto high horses for any reason, please just gently dismount for a moment -- Where have I claimed that our eating patterns when I was younger were better than nowadays? They were different. That's all. I stated that our diet was not what we would now consider healthy.

I'm inclined to believe that as a population, we have been "taught" by the food companies that we need to eat more than we really need. Look at portion sizes - (and I'm not talking snacks or children's food here, but adult portions especially in takeaway meals). We may have had stodgy puddings etc when I was a kid, but portion sizes overall were much smaller so I'm not sure that the extra pudding made a huge difference compared with a single large course nowadays.

but that may well not be the whole story and since MN includes people from their teens into their 80s, from lots of backgrounds, there will be lots of perspectives.

And no-one can argue that something (more likely, many many things) is causing the population to become ever more obese - so why not ask questions like this?

One thing that we do know is that for some (most?) people, grazing on carbs throughout the day is more likely ultimately to lead to obesity and to diabetes, through hormonal changes caused by the carbs being metabolised. So I suspect that eating less frequently but larger meals might be better than grazing. Which is a personal shame, as I am in no position to criticise anyone for grazing!