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?

Agree with them on what snack food you will provide and start budgeting for them. So they've no excuse to eat your ingredients.

What on earth are you talking about?! I'm in my thirties. Latest (2025) nutritional advice is to avoid UPFs. By home cooked, I mean from scratch meals made with natural ingredients.

Obesity is caused by eating too much rubbish food. Check out the numerous threads on weight loss injections - full of posters confirming that they no now longer eat too much food. The causes of eating too much may be numerous but the fact still stands that it is excessive consumption that causes people to be fat.

Creating a family environment where people eat a balanced diet, comprised of healthy food with some treats, and meals being the primary source of calories is a service to your children. It's what happens in most countries without our level of obesity.

ha ha

Vegetables, obviously.

what are these elusive "peqs" of which you speak @Wickedlittledancer?

Obesity is caused by eating too much.

Eat too many calories, you get fat.

It's really that simple.

Countries without our level of obesity are so much less hysterical about food. They also do have snacks.

Hey I'm not the one being pedantic, I'm dyslexic so I spell shit wrong all the time and I ignore my autocorrect so I'm not arsed 😁

Erm, yes, that's what I said?

Countries without our levels of obesity are not hysterical about food as they tend to have ingrained traditions about what and when they eat and don't worry too much outside of that. Which is, again, also what I said. If your children grow up thinking it's normal to sit down and eat properly three times a day with the odd healthy snack, they will do that without 'hysteria'. If you tell them it's fine to wolf down a packet of biscuits everyday just because they are a teenager, they will take that into adulthood. It's about what we make the norm.

nae bother lovely, it just tickled me 😊

Frozen peas to snack on?!

I buy things designated for lunchboxes only so they know those things are off limits e.g cheese strings, certain crisps and biscuits. I will buy other biscuits to snack on and I don’t block fruit so will make sure there’s enough to cover both. They’re not allowed limitless snacks but tbh are good at self-policing.

Frozen peas and corn. Honestly. What are they? Ducks.

Not necessarily true. I’m half French and they don’t snack, it just is not part of their culture whatsoever and was not allowed in my grandparent’s house. They eat huge meals, often three full courses each time but don’t allow snacking in between.

They certainly do snack!

Gouter, anyone?

What about le goûter or radishes with butter and salt?

Ha, cross post

French people don't snack?😂😂

Kids have morning "gouter" and afternoon "gouter". That's even more cultural than their lunch.

Even packs of biscuits for kids recommend the healthier version of their snak, with a biscuit + a fruit - a glass of milk or a "compote". Just have a look on the packet.

Adults invite you to "apero" before lunch (snacks), coffee (with cakes) after lunch, tea (afternoon), apero (snacks before diner) , apero dinatoire (snack instead of diner)

Of course French people snack. They just eat healthy (generally), have much smaller portions, but as so very much relax about food and healthy habits that their snacks are a non-issue, and they don't over-eat or obsess so much about food they polish unhealthy amount of "home-cooked" diners.

They don't eat "huge" meals either, traditionally diner was just about a bowl of soup, and a yogurt, not much else. Things only change when they don't have proper lunches because of work, and modern life.

They just eat better balanced meals, smaller and wouldn't dream of serving potato/ pasta/ at pretty much every diner.

I’m not at this age with my children yet, but growing up I wasn’t allowed to just help myself - I’d always ask so that my mum knew if something needed to be replenished.
We did have limits on snack food - e.g Monday-Friday I would have crisps in my packed lunch so I wouldn’t have another packet of crisps when I got home. I usually used to have a slice of bread and butter while waiting for my dinner but my mum was very much a “no eating before dinner” person and we used to have a pudding/ chocolate bar after if we were still hungry.

I think and op correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re feeding your kids frozen veg as a snack, saving a bit of butter for the next days meal, saving jars of honey as a teaspoon of honey could be scraped out, then it’s either extreme frugality or a very tight budget, and as butter is expensive, probably not an option.

Veg obviously. Veg is a lot more essential than fruit.

Gouter is a defined snack, not constant grazing, so more closely resembles a meal. It's also generally for children as adults are expected to be able to wait and have more self control.

Apero is pre-dinner so essentially a starter.

Hilarious that you're trying to draw parallels with that culture and the culture of stockpiling whole cupboards of junk for kids to help themselves to.

Out of interest - are you Japanese, OP?

I can understand why you would need to restrict access to the key ingredient of a meal if you have meal planned. However, I think it's reasonable to have a range of food which they can snack on which isn't going to break the bank. Eg. muesli, toast with hummus (you can easily make bread and hummus yourself making in non-UPC and not too expensive), Fruit and yogurt etc.

why is a French "apero" a starter, but a pre-diner English banana a snack? 😂

I never really think of veg as a snack. Veg with meals, fruit to snack.

My teen boy could nail 3 bananas in one sitting no problem. Followed a short while later by 3 weetabix. I try and always have fruit, breads, cereal, yoghurt in so he can meet his needs.

Why is a "gouter" a defined snack, but a mid-afternoon banana or cereal bar isn't?

You are aware that a gouter is chocolate, white bread and butter, right? 😂