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?

Sorry for any lack of punctuation or missing words in my previous post, mn is being very glitchy this morning

Not everyone watches TV as pastime.

I think most people enjoy sittimg down with their families and watching a Christmas film or going to the cinema 🤣🤷‍♀️

The way you described the snacks made it sound like you were discussing food a young child or toddler might eat. In which case you aren't perhaps in a strong position to give advice on teenagers who seem to have hollow legs and are always hungry and love to snack 🤷‍♀️

Got it.
Yes, young children, however, I understand frequent hunger/eating as I'm a former athlete.

@DangerousAlchemymy dc are now adults and they never snacked as people here describe, they ate proper meals and understood about healthy diets. We do not have junk food or snacks in the house unless for a specific reason, we have things like fruit but they never ate more than one piece a day, they could make a sandwich if hungry eg would help themselves in school holidays but never did after school/college as we ate proper food as a family at 6.30pm. By 14 dd2 often chose to cook. At primary school age i would give them a couple of biscuits or carrot sticks and hummus at 3.30pm as dinner was at 6.30pm but nothing else. I think this weird snacking constantly is a different world, they live independently and still do not snack (dd2 moans about her dp snacking then not eating his dinner!)

Yep. Cheesestrings, fromage frais, mini sausage rolls, crisps, biscuits, chocolate, pain au Chocolat, ice lollies, whatever fruit we've got in the house, all available whenever.

Each dc have a snack box each per week. When its gone its gone until the following food shop. It really helps with self regulation.amd budgeting.

We have certain things that are limited, eg crisps and chocolate bars. They know the allowance they have of these things. Other things eg fruit, veg, bread, yogurt, cheese, oats are unlimited and I top these things up through the week if we run out.

I haven’t read through every post - but do you keep a meal plan on the wall or similar, so they can see what meals are planned for the week?

Just wondering if that might mean they don’t eat legs of lamb and packs of halloumi and prawns, because they can see it’s on the meal plan?

my child is 2 but my husband has been known to eat things which I’ve earmarked for a specific purpose 🤦🏻‍♀️

Not really any more ..mine are at Uni now so it costs me a fortune when they come home for 2 week/short breaks ..in the Summer hols they have to buy their own.
I just buy fruit & yoghurt. But I find it surprising as I never snacked ..think it must be a generation thing? Luckily when they were at school we had a market stall that used to sell stuff coming to its end by date & I could buy bagfuls for £10 but I agree its expensive.

I think you should clamp down on the snacking. There are a lot of fat kids around these days because many parents (seems there are a few here judging by many of the replies), don't know about nutrition and let their kids stuff there faces with unhealthy garbage,

I don’t understand this craze about ‘snacks’ surely if you eat three meals a day you shouldn’t need constant snacks. I’m sure we didn’t have this fascination with snacks years ago. I understand the odd packet of crisps, fruit or a sweet but I don’t think it’s a necessity. I buy snacks but when they are gone they are gone until the next shop. This teaches them not to eat everything at once but to learn control.

Why is eating three meals a day better than eating smaller meals and snacking in between?

Our 4 year old has access to a snack cupboard & fruit etc. whilst I appreciate a 4 year olds habits will be much cheaper (less tonnes of expensive berries), we are keen for our girls to learn, know and understand their own hunger cues. Surely as teens they are old enough to eat if they’re hungry and not if they aren’t? I don’t know anyone who has such restricted access to help themselves, and I grew up 1 of 4 in a single parent family. Not saying it was premium snacks and appreciate the cost of living crisis though.

As a pp said, I’d probably look to economise elsewhere if possible.

Literal guidance for toddlers is breakfast/snack/lunch/snack/dinner/snack so that’s probably where it came from. I know snacks aren’t essential but saying it’s not because we never used to do it is wild

It’s also pretty wild to think guidance for toddlers will have any relevance for teenagers.

We didn't used to eat between meals in the UK either many years ago.
It's only the last I would say 25 years maybe that I noticed there was more snacking.

Snacks are often less nutritionally balanced than meals and eating a lot of carbohydrate heavy snacks can lead to insulin resistance over time because it doesn’t allow your body to return to a lower blood sugar/insulin level before the next time you eat. The level of snacks you need depends on a range of factors like age, activity level, what the rest of your diet looks like, health conditions etc.

This so so true! My parents are both in their sixties now but when they grew up in was three square meals a day and a pudding only on Sundays. My mum used to go to the sweet shop on a Saturday morning and would be given money to spend on either some sweets, crisps or a comic and that was her treat for the week. I’m in my thirties and we definitely had more - crisps were a daily lunch box fixture but I couldn’t just eat what and when I wanted.

I didn't say anything about nutritional quality or amount of carbs, though - you've just assuming that the snacks I'm referring to are unhealthy and of poor quality for some reason

NHS guidance is no snacks under 12 months and over 12 months you CAN offer snacks but they should be fruit / veg / unsweetened yog / plain rice cakes (no salt or sugar) / toast / cheese.

So toddlers do not need snacks and certainly don’t need cupboard based snacks bar maybe a rice cake. Ella’s kitchen and the rest would have you believe otherwise.

We have snacks available for whenever. Yogurts, toast, cereal etc can all be had if hungry. I’d rather DD learnt to regulate and eat when hungry than ‘ban’ food and then over eat when she has to make her own decisions as she doesn’t know how to control herself.

You didn’t refer to any snacks in particular. You asked a question in general terms so I responded in general terms. What I said applies regardless of the quality of the food, and it also applies to healthy foods like fruit or chicken - I should also have added that although protein doesn’t raise blood sugar it does raise blood insulin so protein rich snacks are also a concern there.

My lads can eat whenever they want 🤷🏻‍♀️..
Always have yogurt, cheese, crackers , cold meats , brown/white bread , fruit . I have what they like here always .
Being honest there’s always crisps & time outs or whatever in the press aswel , but I never have to say to them stop eating crap , they’re pretty good & eat in moderation.
Thankfully no weight problems so we’re lucky in that respect aswel ..