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?

My kids complain that we are an 'ingredients' household.

But there is always bread for toast, cereals, fruit and yoghurt for snacking between meals. They know they have to eat their dinner as well and they nearly always do.

With respect, OP, are you sure your children aren't just hungry and need more food?

Your kids snack on peas and sweet corn?! Wow impressive!!

Oh the irony!

When I was growing up (1970s Scotland), we didn't snack as such. We had all sorts of mini-meals built in, eg cake straight after school, then your tea, and supper before bedtime (that would be something like pancakes). I don't really recall going into the kitchen looking for extras at random times.

As someone mentioned up thread, perhaps the grazing is due to boredom. Kids' attention spans are atrocious nowadays, whereas we could easily be engrossed in an activity for a few hours.

Constant snacking/grazing isn't just an issue for weight (as indeed it might not cause weight issues at all in a very active child) its a big issue for dental health - teeth need a break between eating sessions to recover, and more than 5 or 6 sessions in a day is more than teeth can cope with. Posters up about this all over dental surgeries in my country and dentists ask how often your child eats at check ups. I have bad teeth and I want better for my children, so I limit snacking for that reason too.

Yes and no.

I buy specific snack time snacks (after school in the week and mid afternoon for weekends). Sometimes that means there are a few 'extras' for other times.

But I certainly don't have a cupboard if snacks they can access at any time - I couldn't afford it and don't think constantly grazing is healthy either.

There's almost always fruit in the fruit bowl - cheaper stuff though.

We have snacks. crisps and fruit .Crusty bread .Yoghurts .I do think that restricting food for kids, unless back against the wall financially is not good .Kids get very hungry esp older kids /teenagers

I don't buy unlimited crisps and biscuits etc, and I wouldn't expect them to eat meat ive planned for meals, but there's always bread, eggs, cheese, Weetabix, porridge, fruit for them to help themselves to.

I'm sure others have said so, but you must know that there are key differences between children and adults when it comes to metabolism? Children NEED to snack in between meals. Restricting a child's diet is a sure fire way to an eating disorder. Don't restrict their food, just before a meal, sure. But stopping them snack if they're hungry? Just get in some healthy, low cost snacks. My kids love fruit, rice cakes with peanut butter etc. It doesn't have to be expensive.

I find if what's available requires a bit of effort ie not crisps and chocolate bars, theyre not so hungry!

Agree. If they’re having proper meals and a decent portion then they shouldn’t need to constantly snack. It’s a habit (and a bad one at that).

Mine can have toast or a wrap or fruit if genuinely hungry and there are packets of crisps but if they eat them all at once then I don’t buy more until the next shop.

I do give them nice big meals though.

I think maybe you’re really frugal, the scraping a teaspoon of honey out the empty jar would indicate this, as it’s not something that would occur to most folks, nor is the monitoring of the bananas. The frozen peas and sweet corn as a snack I find the oddest thing I’ve ever read and is frugality gone too far. I’ve never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

howevever if you’re on a very tight budget, then you’re on a very tight budget and they are old enough to understand simply tell them you can’t afford it.

I would always scrape every jar - seems daft not too!

snd yes expensive and very sweet fruit being monitored makes sense to me

Yes pretty much.

Fruit is unlimited. There is a biscuit tin of boring cheap biscuits. They can have cheese/crackers/toast/cereal. I do tell my eldest who is a teen not to have more than one bag of crisps a day. but that's purely because others wise he will obliterate them before me and youngest get a look in.

I don't buy a lot of costly things like "grain" oaty bars or expensive cereal bars, I tend to stick to cheap and easy stuff they know they can have if they are hungry.

Neither of mine would eat a bowl of peas or sweetcorn as a snack!

I’m not sure people are reading the OP’s posts. The OP has said they’re happy to cook/prepare food for themselves. The issue is that in doing so, they’re eating food intended for main meals (tofu, halloumi and leftover lamb were mentioned)

All the shock and surprise over frozen peas & sweetcorn is hilarious to me! 😂It's a great snack!

Mind you, me and my daughters eat raw potato so....... 🤔

My husband thinks we're weird, but I'm of the opinion that any fruit or vegetable, if it's safe to eat cooked then it's safe to eat raw.

Are they teens? They will need more food if they are. Mine are still only little but with two boys I intend to always have instant noodles, yoghurts, cereal, bread to make toast/toasties, fruit and things like that available to fill them up. Snacking on frozen peas is so sad! They must be really hungry to do that!

I'm definitely not using AI; my DC and our snacks (or lack thereof) are real. I've posted some updates since the OP if that reassures you?

I shop for the week……and when snacks are gone, they are gone until the next week. I would top-up shop for milk/bread/fruit if needed, but no other snacks.

I think it’s important that everyone has enough to eat….obviously. Ideally this means they eat 3 good meals and then just have small snacks as needed…and teens do need extras. But I’m aware lots of kids don’t eat good sized meals. There are a variety of reasons for this from eating disorders, to constant snacking, to poor habits and structure of their day. Those who don’t eat 3 good meals probably need to snack more. One thing is to encourage and help with eating good, filling meals.

Re snacks, I don’t think free rein is needed…especially not with UpF packaged snacks. Kids and teens cants always self regulate and it wouldn’t be good for anyone to eat multiple packets of crisps or biscuit each day. I’m not good at self regulating either and that’s part of why I limit wha I buy and what’s available. But there does need to be food available for when hungry. It’s a question of what.

Probably unfettered access to all kinds of treats encourages more snacking and impacts how well they eat their main meals. For this reason I don’t think loads of snacks esp packaged ones is good.

I suppose ideally there would be a plenty of different fruit available. If on a budget, that might just be apples and bananas. As Op says, I can’t see why anyone wants to eat 3 or 4 bananas a day. But they prob. Neeed access to some carbs like bread if hungry.

For some kids this isn’t about hunger. Foraging in cupboards and wanting constant food can be a behavioural issue. It can be about boredom or control and I’ve known some ND kids who have real troubles with stealing food, hiding food and especially sugary stuff….which isn’t really related to hunger. OP, is there some if this going on?

It’s more complex than many people seem to perceive. There are issues about hunger and of course cost, but food can also be about control and other emotional issues, so there’s a lot to work through and get to the root of.

Wait a sec, what is supposed to be sad about snacking on frozen peas?

I love it. Some brands taste like the one we had at grandparent's garden. It's my favourite evening snack. And I can afford any snack I want, I just want my peas.

Why does it matter if one variety is gone before the rest? My kids do this - they might each have 2 or 3 apples for a couple days and then the apples are gone and they'll move on to something else. If it's general snack food that's not interfering with meals or being used for something specific, they can choose what they want. Set some aside if you want to separate snack food from food that's allocated for something.

I never had "snacks" growing up, it was always "you'll spoil your appetite" (true).

Kids nowadays have got used to all this constant grazing, I always thought that was something cows did in fields, not humans!

no wonder we have so much obesity and poor dental hygiene in this country.

When I say 'expect', I am referring to what they typically have, so base an expectation on that typicality when I shop. So if one of them eats 3 bananas one evening instead of one bowl of grapes and one banana, then that's unusual and the bananas run out sooner than I'd anticipated. That's what I mean by 'expect'.

You shouldn’t eat sweetcorn frozen and raw it has a risk of poisoning, peas you can but it’s unpleasant.

How you run your kitchen is exactly how my mum and mum in law did in the 80s. Money was tighter then and food more expensive

we have a bit of a free for all in ours: but we only have one child, and he is always hungry but doesn’t really eat sweets or anything .

I personally prefer our way. But when you see obesity rates: maybe the old way was best (I’m not fat shaming; I too am fat)