Can your family afford snacking and random grazing?

[TransAdmiralsAreAdmirals]

DC are grumpy because we don't allow random grazing and ask that they let me know when they're planning to prepare food using high-value ingredients or ingredients which may reasonably form a central component of a family meal.

I buy enough packed lunch items to last them both for the week, and much prefer it if I don't have to buy replacements if someone eats extra bags of crisps or snacks on extra packets of raisins or grain bars or similar.

Ditto preparing snacks between mealtimes: making toast, or bowls of pasta or cereal, or making fruit smoothies, or baking cupcakes.
Mine will get bowls of frozen peas or sweetcorn to snack on, so I often open the freezer to find empty bags.

Or unlimited condiments, for that matter -oodles of ketchup, sweet chilli sauce or mayo etc.

Or raiding the fruit bowl; there's enough fruit for everyone to have a couple of pieces per day but not to eat 3 bananas in a day, for instance.

We eat 3 square meals a day; quality home-cooked / prepared food and always have fruit available, so they're not going hungry. DC1 in particular insists that all their friends have free reins in the kitchen and that their cupboards are stuffed to the gunnels with snacky foods to which they help themselves with gay abandon, citing fridge raids of quantities of items I could never sustain in our home on our budget: I literally couldn't afford to stock lots of grazing foods in case someone feels a bit bored or peckish.

Can you, and do you, keep plentiful reserves of snacks which your DC are allowed to help themselves to?

I have a loose rule that if it's individually wrapped it's for outside the house - so KitKats and little bags of bread sticks and crisps, cartons of juice are a no for snacks at home. But share bags of crisps, have a bowl, chocolate digestives? Have a couple with your glass of milk. Apples? Sure chop it up over some porridge.

I have a teen boy who trains and I can't believe how much he puts away. Have to be better at getting him to tidy up after his mid afternoon concoctions!

I read your updates.

If it was me:
harissa, sriracha, other sauces - once it’s gone it’s gone, replenish weekly.
Fruit - I’d buy a second bunch of bananas and remind them of the apples from the garden. If they like baking could they make applesauce/an apple butter or a crumble with it, for everyone?
Eggs - buy an extra 12 (£3?) a week and say that if they want protein they need to eat eggs or cheese rather than tofu, lamb etc because the latter is for meals.

That way the rules are clearly set out and they are less at risk of putting their foot in it.

But don't you think the issue here is that it seems EVERYTHING is off limits?

So if you said "here's a shelf. I have bought 6 packs of crisps for the week and a bunch of bananas each, and a packet of bourbons. If you eat them in a day you won't have any for the rest of the week. If you eat them all you are welcome to eat apples/cheese on toast/jam on toast as snacks but I will have plans for everything else"

I mean honestly, bananas are quite a cheap fruit. If you have 4 people in your household, presumably it would be reasonable to expect to get through 4 bananas a day, so a bunch isn't ever going to last longer than a couple of days?

I tend to think the same thing about butter - butter isn't a limited ingredient to me in the same way that a leg of lamb is - I would expect you to keep enough butter in the house to meet the needs of making a pie AND doing something else if someone fancied it. TBH cottage cheese feels like prime snack territory to me, but if that's too expensive then that makes perfect sense.

Why not come up with an agreement that only things on X shelf in the fridge, or only things you have marked with a marker pen can be used without checking?

We have a rule about the teens not eating crisps / cereal bars / chocolate biscuits that are reserved for lunchbox treats.
Snack foods in our house are fruit, toast, cereal and whatever has been baked - flapjack and that kind of thing. Within reasonable quantities.
I am a bit perplexed about peas and sweetcorn as a snack. I would be against any hard-core policing of food as I don't think that is healthy. But I do understand that it isn't healthy or affordable to have people eating four bananas/ all the crisps / a quiche intended for tea etc.
When I was a kid my mum used to insist we could just have a biscuit if hungry. I hate biscuits , much to the bemusement of my colleagues. Biscuits are not a proper food. I think toast is better than that , or an apple.

People can’t afford to let their DC eat expensive items with no consideration about the planned use or the cost.

Teaching DC to be considerate, think wider than their personal whims is good parenting.

Otherwise you end up with the kind of adults that load up their own and their DC’s plate at a buffet, don’t think about the people behind them, and waste good stuff while others behind them have gone without. Such frustrating behaviour.

OP I was advised by a more experienced mum to make certain foods unlimited for snacking. You can draw up a list with them-
carrots, berries, apples, toast, milk, hot chocolate, plain yogurt, noodles, eggs etc.

Fish sticks (surimi?) are a good, cheap alternative to prawns.

You then take the hit of buying more butter and eggs than you thought you could ever need, but know the prawns and halloumi and lamb roast are safe!

When mine were children and teenagers they could help themselves to cereal, bread, cheese and fruitbowl fruit at anytime. There was always bread in the freezer.

Teenagers have always needed extra food. I once asked my mum what her and her brothers snacked on during the war and she said they were allowed to fry up a big pan of potatoes and carrots ... in dripping I guess.

Rationing food is grim .

It's so hard to get a real sense of the impact of this budget because all the "it's terrible" comments here & in the media seem to focus on people who ten or twenty years ago would have been considered well off.

Today, however, the definition of that seems to have changed & we have home owning, electric car driving, two holidays a year, private school educating people complaining that they are being hard done by.

I think you have a weird attitude to food. For context my BMI is 20, so I’m not coming at you with an unhealthy idea of food.

It’s simply not normal for people to be snacking on frozen vegetables let alone children. That’s a desperation snack to me, it’s more likely your kids are hungry as opposed to being uber healthy responsible kids or whatever you try to tell yourself. I’m heavily into fitness and I can’t think of a single diet or influencer even who encourages you to snack on frozen sweetcorn, it’s not the done thing.

I also don’t consider butter as a high value item that is off limits to use. It’s annoying if you’re expecting butter and it isn’t there, but it’s not a high value item at all. Just let them use it.

You seem like you’re putting being tight and stingy over your kid’s happiness. Sure you much prefer not buying extra things for lunch, but like it’s a packed lunch? Can your food shop not flex to an extra packed lunch here & there? It sounds unnecessarily tight and like you have no contingency plan. You sound completely in control of everything your kids consume at any given moment. Having an extra packed lunch here & there, isn’t going to make them fat/isn’t unhealthy. It genuinely sounds like they are hungry.

The fact your kids spend pocket money on snacks, is really sad actually. I’d much rather spend the money on snacks and let them save their money for something fun and exciting that lasts longer than snacks do?

You need a lot more fruit! Your kids are clearly hungry.

No, OP, you’re not weird to want to be able to meal plan, and to have a sensible conversation with your DC about this. Constant snacking isn’t healthy but freedom to choose what they’re eating is also important. I think an honest chat about why they’re snacking (while you listen) and wirking out what they can snack on and what is out of bounds is fair
FWIW my two are younger than yours and have to ask for snacks. The older one will stop when he’s full. The younger one definitely likes to pick just for the sake of it

Mine are grown up now but were free to help themselves to whatever was around, as long as they put the empty packet in the bin. When I was growing up it was the same arrangement. Neither I nor my children are particularly snackers now and if we do it's one of something. My DP however was brought up in a house with food that was very controlled, I don't think there was much food tbh and it wasn't particularly nice, as an adult he is the classic teenager snacker. If I buy a multi pack of crisps they are all gone in two days. Same with chocolate, cooked meats, cheese, bread. If I was you OP I would buy in more snacks/ingredients and encourage them to carry on cooking. Your meal description sounds lovely by the way.

3 bananas is nothing!

I'm afraid you are wrong on this.
Reign - the rule of a monarch
Rein - the strap attatched to a bit to control a horse.
If you consider the root meaning of the words it is clear that 'free rein' is correct, as it refers to allowing a horse to go where it pleases.
... Unless, of course, it was a wry comment on the very frequent MN misuse of 'reign'?

I have 4 kids they each pick a snack item each week (14 yr old is giant cookies) then we have fruit veg toast cereal cheese noodles pasta and bits available with a good homecooked meal ...if they want any more like snacky junk food they buy it themselves

How long are you expecting 6 bananas to last? There’s at least 3 of you, maybe more in your household. If you each had 1 banana per day which is totally reasonable, the bananas would be gone in 2 days. So either way, 6 bananas aren’t going to last much longer than 24 hours in your household.

Do you really want to replicate the eating habits of the UK? It's absolutely reasonable for teens not to eat main meal items and to check in with parents before cooking those type of foods. That is not bullying.

We never snacked all day as children in the 60s and 70s and certainly not on junk food. We couldn't afford it. We ate three .meals a day and that's it.
I deplore the endless snacking, its why so many kids are obese, eating crap all day.

She's not restricting their food.

Teens need a lot of food, and their stomachs are smaller than adults so they do need smaller, more frequent meals. (Or 3 main meals and snacks in between). Bread is cheap and easy so I’d never restrict that. If you want to keep them away from the items you’ve marked to be used for main meals, tell them. I’ve put a list up of snack ideas (rice cake w/peanut butter, eggs, cereal etc) so they know what’s there for them.

It's 'free rein' - it's a term that comes to us from horse riding, meaning the horse can wander along at his own pace.

She absolutely is if she's going into her freezer and finding empty bags of sweetcorn and pea's

sorry, wrong thread!!

Lol, this is such a load of rubbish. Well on your way!!!

Why? My DD loves frozen peas as a snack. No different to eating a carrot or banana, and finishing them off.