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 eat frozen peas, they’re delicious! Also frozen blueberries

I have two adult dc at home - dd is 20 sporty and trains 5 times a week, ds is 18 has autism and severe learning disabilities.
DD likes to snack on greek yougurt with berries and seeds, rice cakes with peanut butter, apples, bananas, cereal bars. She regulates what she eats and has been like this for years.
DS would eat a multipack of crisps and any biscuits / cake in the house, given the opportunity! He has unlimited access to the fruit bowl and I keep that full of apples oranges and bananas. He also likes rice cakes and peanut butter.
I restrict crisps and sweet treats because he can't regulate his intake.
Cereal (whole-grain, low-sugar) and toast have always been available when they are hungry.
Your rules sound a bit too rigid.

Unfortunately unrestricted snacking leads to outwards not upwards growing

not RTWT but we buy food for meals and snacking and DC eat what they want when they want. There is no control from us as the parents over any of the food.

I find these threads amazing! I'm rather old, and when I was growing up there was no such thing as snacking or eating between meals, same for all the other kids as I remember. You ate what you were given at mealtimes and that was that.The exception was a few sweets on the way home from school, bought with our sixpence (old 6d) pocket money, maybe an ice cream when on a day out, and Easter eggs. Don't remember anyone being obese either

No limits on snacks in my house and they can help themselves whenever they are hungry.

However, mine wouldn't finish off cottage cheese or eat all the ham in one go as its not the kind of snacks they go for.

They are more likely to polish off the yogurt, cereal bars, ice cream etc and god help me if their friends come around as then the biscuits are gone.

Mine are a bit younger, but dont have total free rein... or reign :)
I'm fine with a snack after school and usually it's unhealthy, but I do expect them to ask as my youngest doesn't eat much so I want her to eat dinner.

I guess i do reign the kitchen after all.
My kids wouldn't eat something destined for a main meal (they know that's unfair on me).

Maybe for lazy kids. Mine are very active and slim.

Exactly!
my children now adults were never greedy, they didn’t eat just because it was there, they could have whatever they wanted and their friends too were welcome to have something if my girls had anything, I’d never leave them out.
My daughters friend wasn’t allowed to have snacks or eat when she wanted to, as soon as she got any money she’d go and spend it in the sweet shop/ bakery or supermarket!

its actually free rein. It comes from riding.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/usage-free-rein-vs-free-reign#:~:text=She%20handed%20over%20the%20reins,to%20your%20editor%20or%20teacher.

I never encouraged snacking, but I don’t snack either. My dc growing up had 3 meals a day and small snack at 3.30pm when at primary school, far healthier

I am rather old too and not from a wealthy family but there was always fruit, plain-ish biscuits, bread and butter and so on for snacking. I am so old that crisps came with a blue screw of salt and were expensive treats for saturday evenings.

@Portakalkedi. So true. I’d love to see a graph with the prevalence of snacking vs obesity rates. I’m younger than you (post decimalisation) but still no snacking growing up and neither did my dc (early 2000’s) as wrecks their appetites

Why healthier? What research exists to show that 3 big meals plus one snack is healthier than, say, 2 big meals and 3 snacks? Or 1 big meal, 1 small meal and 2 snacks?
I can’t eat big meals. They make me feel sluggish and unproductive. So I have small meals and snacks in between. Why do you think your way is healthier than mine?

And yet so many of the adults brought up with 3 large meals a day and no snacks are now obese.

Well said, Genevieva

For all the talk about "controlling" food intake leading to issues there's a noticeable lack of comment on what modelling a lack of control looks like - except sadly we can already see this with the increasing girths of children, some of whose jaws rarely seem to stop moving

As ever what's needed is balance; nobody would suggest "starving them" (and if being hungry for dinner equals "starving" try explaining that to folk who really are) but incessant munching hardly seems helpful either

No, it's free rein - a metaphor from horse riding

In the UK? Perhaps. In other countries?

We’re talking about the UK here though aren’t we?
It just baffles me that so many posters on here say ‘I had 3 meals a day as a kid and no snacking, far healthier’ when so many adults are obese, and the eating habits that have led to them being obese as an adult will have been established in childhood.
I did snack as a child. I’ve never been able to eat large meals, it just doesn’t suit me, so I’ve always had small meals plus snacks. Currently 5ft 5 and 9 stone. Would I have been ‘far healthier’ if I’d had 3 large meals instead?

When I had teenagers, fruit and veg were the priority for snacking. They could eat grapes by the punnet, I didn't buy small packets of crisps and nuts, just bought big bags and put nuts in jar. Money was and is tight, but I wanted them to eat well and understand when and what to eat. They also were taken on many 'reduced items' shopping trips. And from about 10 had a say in what we got and how we would eat it.

Why don’t you do the “snack basket” idea I’ve seen online. At the start of the week you stock each child a basket with snacks designed to last them a week. They have free access to it, but when it’s gone, then they just have to eat the less desirable snacks I.e fruit/ veg, toast etc. honestly teenagers have an insatiable appetite through growth I don’t think it’s fair to restrict this. We have lots of snacks always available but they always ask and I will limit if dinners coming up, or before bed it’s fruit/ veg yoghurts only. They all know this and don’t seem to take advantage because it’s always freely available. Restricting foods causes them to obsess about it and make it the “forbidden fruit”.

Yes, absolutely. Neither of us follow the “three meals a day” rule - we both prefer eating little and often, which tends to mean we eat something every 2-3 hours during the day.

I grew up in a household where snacks were considered “bad” and it caused me a lot of issues with food as an adult.

Why is three meals and one snack any healthier than two meals and two snacks?

Sounds like a prison to me.