Ice cream on holiday

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If you were on a sun holiday how often would you allow your kids have an ice cream or treat? Just curious, am having a disagreement with DH here.

Some (thankfully not many!) of these replies are hilarious. I do feel sorry for the kids whose parents allow them one scoop of ice cream every few days on holiday for fear of them becoming obese if they have too much sugar over one week😣

Ice cream as pudding to a main meal doesn't even count in the daily ice cream tally on holiday.

It’s tricky but I think it’s good to have some limits, even on holiday, rather than all bets are off. One treat every day, plus dessert/fizzy drinks at mealtimes seems reasonable to me.

He is 11 It is normal to put on weight prior to growth spurts. The fat is stored energy to rapidly grow.
Happened to both my dc and they are adults now.

Just like a free limoncello with the bill doesn't count as a drink

What's the link between the heat and sugar? Surely you can have a smaller portion if a normal one is 'too much' for you,

Absolutely. And desert at every meal if they want it. It’s a holiday. That’s kind of the point.

Once a day
Occasionally twice a day
But we don’t have pudding generally so ice cream is instead

I’m kind of with your DH here. I would be bothered if I had an overweight child, who was already aware of and upset about their weight, and they had two ice creams, one of which was huge. I wouldn’t fly off the handle but I’d be pretty annoyed.

I understand you want to relax on holiday, but parking the issue for the holiday just means there’s more of a battle and more excess weight when you get back.

Some 11 yo boys will turn excess weight into height/muscle during puberty. Some will just become fat teenagers.

@Perfect28 No demonising here. I do eat ice-cream, just a small amount not more than once a week. Imo that is plenty - people will have different attitudes around how often they eat certain foods/what foods they prefer. 🤷

I do feel sorry for the kids whose parents allow them one scoop of ice cream every few days on holiday for fear of them becoming obese if they have too much sugar over one week😣

Some families go on holiday more than one week a year. We go away about 6-8 weeks. So loads of sweet treats would have a bigger health impact.

I think a definition of 'ice cream' is relevant. A single scoop with a cone is what I would call an ice cream, or a packet one like we have at home. The other night the ice cream was huge, there were biscuit parts and caramel sauce and I would consider it large for an adult. That's when I should have put the foot down and said we need to be careful tomorrow because that counted the equivalent of at least 3. We are not AI, it's an apartment off a promenade with lots of gelato stands.

I had a chat / argument with DH. He apologised for hassling DS when reading and I admitted I should have acknowledged the extra large portion as mentioned above. We have decided 2 is ok some days, there is nothing more joyful than walking along the beautiful promenade with an ice cream, and we dont want to deprive them of that. Likewise another scoop later at a restaurant or after is ok too if food is otherwise reasonably healthy, when we are eating out we don't want to be squabbling. Dh is going to the supermarket shortly to get a supply of ice lollies as an alternative to ice cream every other day. We will develop a strategy together when we are home to deal with DS health long term.

Wowsers, who knew that ice-cream on holiday could be so complicated... ?

56 ice creams (1 a day for 8 weeks of the year) out of 365 afternoon snacks a year isn't going to do any harm is it?

Like they might have 150 portions veggie sticks and hummus and 159 portions of cheese and crackers the other days in the year.

I can't get worked up over the 56 ice-creams....

Unless you're feeding your kids a lot of crap, sugary foods and UPF and every day, it really isn't a problem.

At least once a day or it isn’t a proper holiday.

If it then turns up at dessert or you pass a fabulous gelateria that evening then twice or more … basically whenever irresistible ice cream presents itself you shouldn’t resist on holiday . At home, maybe twice a week?

Once a day for ice cream but other treats as well probably as I get excited and want them too!

And ice cream in Europe often isn’t too full of upfs. They tend to make it fresh from whole ingredients.

Quite honestly I’d rather ice cream with a milk base, or even sorbet with a fruit base, than things like Haribos or even baklava or white flour based cake etc.

Things like magnums are a bit different …

At £5 for a basic cone with one scoop of ice cream or £7.50 for two scoops in Cornwall- none .

It's really not healthy for kids to have rolls of fat at any age or any point of puberty. It is what it is but this denial is what's contributing to childhood obesity. If a child is a healthy weight you should basically be able to see their ribcage.

Not before a growth spurt, they go iut before before they go up.

I'd be livid if someone told me I couldn't have a beer in the afternoon, a G&T/cocktail before dinner and a couple of glasses of wine with/after dinner on holiday. And that would probably be a week's alcohol consumption at home.

Holidays are supposed to be different, and some things are synonymous with holidays. Ice cream (as a child) is definitely one of those things.

If your DS is overweight, having an ice cream (or - shock horror - 2) every day for the next 7 days is not going to make a jot of difference in the grand scheme of things. Enjoy the holiday and use your return home to establish whatever food/eating/activity regime is right for your family to get the balance you're looking for.

Yes. One a day is fine

My point is that some people are saying they allow unlimited sweet stuff on holiday - over 6-8 weeks of holidays that’s not ok.

I think we agree?

I think there is more time on holiday for consideration of ice cream. Myself and partner spent a good hour yesterday on ice cream. We discussed having ice cream in the afternoon instead of after dinner. And then I caused a major issue by discovering that the shop did not have the ice cream I wanted.
We also spent 10 minutes before dinner discussing banana as a flavour for ice cream I am in favour she isn't.
I also suggested replacing dinner with one of those giant ice creams but didn't pursue it as dinner was pizza which I also love. I think part of the problem is that the normal shop ice creams here are better than in the UK and of course it is hotter here which makes ice cream more desirable.
The answer is one ice cream of any size once a day btw. But we are still in week 1 here so that may change.

OP, you sound very sensible and your DH needs to dial it back. As someone with a DS who was also always a bottomless pit and you was also properly overweight, not just a bit of extra padding, I can tell you that losing that weight is important, but you have to be very very careful about the emotional piece. DS hovered around an ED for a while and we were on high alert, as was school. Thank goodness it settled down, but I am still cautious. I believe there is some research that EDs are hugely on the rise for boys, so that's worth taking into account.

In terms of getting on top of it goin forward, we had a basically 3 prong approach:

1. aim to increase ovreall movement. DS was doing sports, but often it's a few times a week and not great at just keeping them moving at a low level. DS used to do obstacle course type circuits in our garden with DH and was at an age we encouraged him to hit the park with his friends for football/basketball etc.
2. Reduce treats (if relevant). We had definitely got into a habit of too many smaller treats so we took a slimming world approach to treats - allocated "points" and he was allowed x number of points per day (only applied to treats - no slimming world banning of avocados for example). this helped him to feel in control and like it wasn't completely ott.
3. looked at the food we were eating - we'd slipped into what I think of as "easy kids food". The kind that's highly nutritious and calorie dense because so many children dont' eat very much - cauliflower cheese, spaghetti bolognaise, cottage pie etc etc etc. But he is an excellent eater and liked huge portions. So we swapped to make sure we were getting a much more balanced diet for him that was some carbs, some protein and lots of vegetables. eg salmon with rice and stir fried veg or chicken tray bakes with salad/veg and new potatoes etc. And even when making pasta, I made a big effort to make big, chunky sauces that had extra veg and that allowed us to ensure that wasn't massive portions of pasta to fill him up.

He was a tiny bit younger than your DS when this started, but he's had a couple of times where he's got a bit chunkier but usually it's pre a major growth spurt! We have some hilarious photos of him from the Easter holiday last year where he's notably shorter than DH and just a smidgeon on the chunky side and then 4 months later, he's almost the same height as DH and very slim!

I'd definitely schedule in some fun activity for after camp each day. Could you do a bike ride/trampolining or walk at least part of the way home?
Or Pokémon Go together or something like that?
And then when you have free days with him, just get out of the house as much as you can with a packed lunch and some snacks. I find being out and about really cuts down on snacking. Maybe set some challenges like walking to certain places, that sort of thing.

But I wouldn't worry about ice cream on holiday, more about making sustainable changes going forward.