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?

OP, I’d be over the moon if my kids were snacking on veg, making their own protein based snacks (such as halloumi or cold cut based wraps) and baking their own treats instead of processed crap, on top of such wonderfully balanced meals. I wouldn’t want to discourage this.
Are they overweight? If not, then they need the food. If they stopped this snacking, they’d be taking on less calories than their bodies need atm and be under-fed.
I understand your frustration with the meal planned items. Could you siphon off anything that’s ingredients for a meal into a container in the fridge and similar in the cupboard - so your meat/protein, sides for each meal. But ensure there’s a stash of extra protein/items they can rustle up?
For lunchbox items, again, box them up for the week.
Then other crisps, fruit that you don’t want to replace (perhaps the expensive stuff) and other nice to have snacks, have a when it’s gone it’s gone approach. But I’d only do this if there were a few unlimited options (in our house the fruit bowl is kept topped up for eg, but when the berries and grapes are gone, they’re gone until next week). We keep raisins, breadsticks and plain cereal bars topped up, but the sugary/more expensive snacks aren’t. Cheese, ham, cooked chicken, Greek yoghurt is topped up. But other meats and proteins are for meals.
Your kids are already making great choices with their snacks (protein and healthy fats, veggies are great), so I’d build a ‘things that will be topped up’ stash with their input, then make clear what is to be kept separate for meals.

The teens moaning about a lack of snacks are really moaning that (1) they want more junk food in their lives (2) they want food that they like the taste of and that they can take off the shelf in the fridge/cupboard and insert into their mouths with no further input required. Teens often don’t accept the work and money and effort that feeding oneself requires. They don’t want to see it, don’t want to accept it, it’s too boring. I don’t blame them tbh 😂. Our western lives are too far balanced away from “real” life towards all the unimportant extras.

No way. It's a bad habit of people who give in to whining children. No snacks ever. 3 proper meals a day, home cooked food. If he buys snacks whilst out they're his.

I used to keep extra bread, cereal, noodles and pasta because as teens they were bottomless pits. They didn't care about quality they just wanted quantity so I bought value items. There was always fruit and plenty of stuff in the cupboard and fridge to put on the bread and pasta.Itended not to buy extra crisps and biscuits as they didn't fill them. They didn't do much snacking when small and don't snack as adults so it was obviously food that they needed.

Mine are always eating too, especially DD1, she will eat four eggs at a time sometimes 😹 I don’t know where they put it as they are both very slim.
basically I will buy snacks, fruit etc. at the weekend and they have to make it last until the following week.
They also leave empty packets and they eat frozen peas.
I think it’s pretty normal

People say fresh fruit to differentiate from dried fruit. Raisins to me are crap and terrible teeth. It’s very easy to over consume on dried fruit. Whole fresh fruit and vegetables is the ideal. In season we get through tonnes of berries but I won’t buy them now unless frozen.

We have a snack basket, I fill it with crisps/breakfast bars/instant noodles etc. from the weekly shop, but once it's gone, it's gone till the next shop. Bread (and sandwich stuff) and cereal is always available. I'm not going to limit 2 teens like that! Fruit, again, once it's gone it's gone. I will limit the youngest because he's a fruit fiend. Especially berries.

I'm not prepared to buy unlimited, but as a bare minimum I feel bread and cereal should always be available. But co-op is a 10 min walk away so it's not me replenishing in the week, they have to go get it themselves.

The alternatives are dried or tinned, not rotten 😆

Yes, we have plenty of snacking items and my boys just check with me if they were thinking of raiding items like meat/pots of cream that could have been intended for a planned meal.

Fresh as opposed to dried, or tinned, or frozen.

Just curious, how do you all get your 5 a day if fruit is limited?

What a rigid way of thinking.

5 a day can include things like vegetables, juice, soups etc.

Bet your fun at parties

Yes always snacks available, and I’d hate to think my child felt they couldn’t had a snack after school or when they were hungry. They are probably eating vegetables as there isn’t much else by the sounds of it. A few packs of value yogurts, crumpets, hummus with veg sticks, some biscuits, crackers, baby bells etc. kids are growing they need to have more than three meals a day. They are clearly hungry.

Sadly even Google can get it wrong sometimes. There was time when "chaise lounge" was winning out over "chaise longue" in terms of number of hits, although these days I think it has swung back to something like 55–45.

Yes I have food in for snacking. They are allowed toast and butter (no fancy toppings) and fruit on an unlimited basis (though yes I would say something if they had 3 bananas). If they ask me I will usually also let them have cereal, cheese and crackers and maybe noodles or left overs.

Crisps and sweet stuff are very limited, we barely buy any and I would definitely expect them to ask before they started baking cookies etc.

I think there’s a balance here- of course they shouldn’t be filling up on biscuits and crisps but it’s equally crap not to be able to eat if you are genuinely hungry in your own house. If it’s the money I would just not buy lots of biscuits or sweets/ chocolate and get more bread/ fruit/ crackers/ cereal. You could also consider reducing expensive ingredients like beef if it’s the financial side that worries you.

I guess to me it’s like a last resort if you had absolutely nothing left.

I think it's miserable not being able to have a few pieces of toast or a bowl of cereal if you're hungry. I'm on benefits but food is before everything else, so yes, I do have a surplus of food that allows the DC food in-between. If you are that money tight then go to the food bank OP, growing children need food.

They obviously don't if they are rationed to 1 per day. It's a bit sheltered to think everyone automatically has 5 per day, there are many DC who don't have 1 per week.

@TransAdmiralsAreAdmirals I sympathise with the “eating key stuff and not checking” and the “putting empty boxes back”. Mine do the latter sometimes but I do tell them off for it when / if I catch them.

They’re pretty good at not eating the food that’s needed for other meals though. So eg if there’s leftover meat from a roast or something in there, we’ll tell them if it’s destined for something or if it’s up for grabs. The other week we’d had a beef joint, and I told them it was in the fridge for anyone’s sandwiches / lunches / etc, help yourself. Yesterday one of them spotted the pot of leftover roast chicken, didn’t have any as he wasn’t sure if it was earmarked, and today he checked with me and I said it was fine.

I would be unimpressed if they ate a key “main meal ingredient” without checking. But I’d always have eg enough butter, bread, eggs, cheese in etc that it’s unlikely to get used up week by week. They’ll eat all the hot cross buns within days, but then they’ll just have toast from then on.

We often have eg one portion of a family meal left over eg curry, and those are usually up for grabs too - they know this but we’d normally mention it when putting it away in the fridge.

They help themselves freely to bread, eggs, flour for baking, butter, cheese, ham, fruit, any Kit Kat type stuff we have in. They wouldn’t cook up raw meat or anything that is usually a main meal ingredient. If we run out of any of the listed things they can go to the shop to get more.

How much do you involve them in food discussions? Ours are usually involved in meal plan for the week (we make them volunteer a couple of ideas). I ask them if there’s anything they want. If it’s not too pricey I’ll get it. But if it runs out, it runs out and that’s on them. They’ll have to wait till next shop. But the more they’re involved, the more they know what’s going to be needed. Maybe a bit of judicious sending them to the shop to buy replacements, or one child having no crisps in packed lunch because the other one ate them - guessing the ire of one child would hit harder with sibling?

You’ve mentioned the apples in cold storage - do they all live in there or do you keep plenty out in the fruit bowl?

Sorry that’s all v wordy. Basically - if they run out of stuff they snack on, it’s on them and they have to wait. If they run out of family stuff you all need for meals, make them go and buy more occasionally - the inconvenience is a good memory jogger. Include them in food planning so they know what’s coming up. And if there are things they love and they’re not too unhealthy or expensive, buy more.

@JudgeBread

"Lmao if you're going to be an insufferable pendant"
🤭

That sounds awfully controlling.

If mine fancies 3 yogurts instead of a "usual" 1 yogurt, or 3 bananas instead of a "1 usual banana", I just buy more bananas.

I don't stock that much fresh food, so there's no waste - I prefer to do a catch up shop than looking at rotting bananas that no-one will eat.

I don't know how hungry I am going to be in 2 days, how can they? Depends on their schedule, their tiredness, level of physical activities, we are allowed to eat more or less.

Aimlessly munching on crips is a no, but I can't control the appetite, and it's not possible to have strictly rigid meal times between work, clubs, and various commitments. I couldn't care less if a teen eats a banana 30mn before diner - they're not polishing an entire chocolate cake, they're just hungry, and they'll eat just the same at diner.

You say home cooked health then real off ultra processed pack lunch items.
No kids don’t need to snack all day it causes rotten teeth and obesity.