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?

This thread is nuts, no wonder everybody is so fat!

From toddlerhood some snacks foods are purchased and they are specific like fruit, cheese, a slice of toast etc. Snacking on crisps and biscuits is not a good life habit to get into. Proper, home cooked meals are provided and you sit at the table with family to eat them. No cupboards full of totally crap UPF to go wild on if you don't want your kids to be obese adults. Obviously the odd biscuit and cake is fine but not a permanent stockpile to tuck into.

Completely normal for you not to expect key meal ingredients to be used for snacking - not for budget reasons, just planning!

But they're hungry?

Are you really saying you're banning them from eating toast and cereal?

Baking cupcakes is cheaper than buying them. They can use a muffin recipe that uses oil if you're worried about them overusing butter. But surely you can't be rationing actual flour?

I think the most rigid people are not that active. It's insane to have such strict rules on food - forced to eat too much one day when you're not hungry, but not having enough the following day. Sometimes you have a harder training session, you are just more hungry.

It's not having the odd snack that is the cause of obesity

"Home cooked" food has never translated as being "healthy" anyway , it's delusional to pretend it is. you can home-cook junk food 😂

Neither of my children were particularly big eater, even my 6’5” son.
He was never fond of big meals (it’s hard for me to relate to my brother telling me that his son has hollow legs & is continually hungry)
I always bought packets of rice cakes from Lidl (they were about 69p then, probably double now)
He would have eaten half a packet.
I then started buying microwave popcorn from Home Bargains (29p a packet) and when he fancied a snack that would be his go to.
They never got many sweets, and my son always preferred crispy savoury snacks, like crackers and cheese, tortilla chips (shop brand) and monkey nuts.
Perhaps, you could have a shelf in the fridge, with a note saying ‘permissible food’ with a loaf of bread, jam, Peanut butter and cheese, for them to help themselves.
If they don’t eat food at dinner, because of snacking, add it to the shelf for the next day.
Everyone is different, I guess nowadays kids do snack more.

I think this thread is nuts, but believe it or not, not being so controlling and rigid actually gives better result. None of my family is fat

We don't make such a huge unhealthy deal of food

For goodness sake that’s like something out of the 1950s before obesity was understood, 😂

Obesity is understood. It's caused by eating too much food.

There's no big deal, that's the point. Just modelling healthy habits for life.

I know lots don't due to cost and/or parental nutritional knowledge...but the other snacks the poster suggested (including veg) seems cost or knowledge isn't the main factor, it's an active choice to limit to 1 fruit a day. Which seems...odd.

I mean this gently, are you very elderly? Your lack if understanding and mad comments on home cooked food feels a little post war era, where someone never educated themselves past whay they grew up learning, then decided to spend their time on line being goady.

What is this about frozen peas and frozen sweetcorn being eaten as a snack apparently? WTF

Having a snack when you are hungry and eating reasonable portions during meal times IS a perfectly healthy habit.

Not being strictly rigid about meal time is another. That's what snacks are for 😂

I thought it was just me 😂😂

We use frozen peas for injuries, not snack, maybe I've done it wrong all these years 😂

I also find that odd, I’ve never ever heard of someone giving their children frozen veg as a snack, and sweetcorn is a risk. I get a tight budget, but a bowl of frozen veg is a new one on me.

and again

"home cooked meals" do not mean "healthy meals"

Ive seen frozen grapes often recommended for adults on a diet, maybe that comes from there 😂

Do you have teenage sons heavily into sport? I do and "the odd biscuit" doesn't cut it. Mine are on 3-4,000 calories a day and are fitter than butchers dogs.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I have a super-active job and don't want a big meal halfway through the day - I have a small breakfast, a late-morning snack, a late lunch and then a snack and a small meal before bed.

I don't see how that's somehow worse than eating three larger meals, lol. It's the same amount of food, just spread out differently.

Advice is actually to limit fruit and to eat more vegetables, as fruit is higher in sugar.

That sounds miserable OP, DS would have hated that. Admittedly, when he lived at home he could be a bit of a nightmare for eating way too much so we would compromise and he’d have his own shelf with ‘his’ snacks on it to last the week. If he chose to gorge on them over 1-2 days then that was his problem and he had to use pocket money 🤷‍♀️

I’d normally buy him a multipack of crisps, some chocolate bars and some sweets. It seemed to work fairly well.

Yeah but not frozen,

sure, but nobody has gotten obese due to eating 3 pieces of fruit instead of 2 though.

Why not?

Let it go 😉

Fruit is different, frozen grapes are ok, but frozen peqs and sweetcorn as your regular snack? I am afraid I think that’s about frugality.