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?

That’s very rude - OP is sensibly talking to her kids and involving them in understanding that food doesn’t magically appear out of nowhere at no cost. She sounds completely level headed and sane. Not at all hard work, and as for controlling - well, I think it’s entirely reasonable to control the food budget when you’re needing to budget your money!

As a PP just said - the kids are impressionable and fancy eating “snacks from packs” more than they do (outside of the money they’re given free rein to spend on snacks weekly). They can wish all they want - kids can’t always have the things “all” their friends have, these don’t sound deprived in any way!

Your original question was if there are families with unlimited snacks of the packaged variety sitting around with the kids able to self regulate the use of them and the answer for me is yes. I have a storage unit filled with packaged snacks and sweets and my kids and their friends can have what they like during the day. Just before dinner maybe not, but I haven’t had to be too strict about it as they eat their meals well and have loads of fruit and veg.

They’re super active with lots of sports and walking and such and have no health issues. My daughter is a keen baker so often makes whatever she’s thinking about, and the only rule is to be considerate of the timings and to write down anything we are low on so I can get it on our order.

I’m not from the uk but I hear this bs all the time on mn…. Omg. I have experience of living in France and other countries and the way people talk about the French and their kids on here is so deluded . There are kids who eat crap there like everywhere, actually so so much chocolate milk and chocolate cereal but yes food in school is generally better there overall , I’ll say that! . It’s also the only country I’ve ever seen children hit in public by parents but apparently they have it all figured out there 😂
I have loads of friends brought up by alternative parents and they all have food issues, funnily there parents would happily drink a lot (huge amount of sugar in alcohol-that’s what alcohol is ) but very anti-sugar 😂. I am not at all into upf and breastfed all my babies until 14 months and we are conscious about food but this level of control and focus on food is really not healthy.. really .

Toast, cereal, smoothies and fruit is quick. We bake and there is often some kind of biscuit, or oaty, nutty energy ball creations around. That's quick too.

I think you're being too black and white about this.

Yes, logically speaking, your children aren't going to go hungry with toast, cereal and fruit on offer, but sometimes life is about more than just "not being hungry".

Your kids are telling you that, sometimes, they want to be able to open the fridge or cupboard, grab a packet and eat. If you genuinely cannot afford to do that, then fair enough, but I do think it may be worth looking around for deals or bargains occasionally so that they can have a cheap pack of crisps, or a cereal bar, or a pepperami.

I guess my view is that, as an adult, I know that I like to be able to go to my kitchen and grab something to eat without having to cook, or think too much. I also know that I don't always want "proper" food like toast, or cereal, or fruit.

I remember being a teenager living in an "ingredients" household and finding it quite miserable sometimes. Yes, I could always find something to eat - veggies and hummus, or toast with peanut butter, or weetabix - but eating should be about more than just stopping hunger, it should also be enjoyable, and varied, and not monotonous.

Have not read the whole thread. If your dc are resorting to secretly eating frozen peas and sweetcorn. I think they are quite hungry. I guess there is a medium between letting then eat too much junk food and having to sneak frozen sweetcorn .

Yes always have snacks available. Also bake so they can have different snacks. Sometimes they choose a bowl of cereal, fruit or packet snacks. I do say they have to ask before they help themselves but rarely say no. That’s more due to not ruining the main meal (dependent on time). Both my teens have had big growth spurts annd eat good size meals. They do vary in how hungry/snaky they are dependent on growing etc.

I do think it’s understandable to have different rules in different houses dependent on available money. I would say I have found baking affordable once you have the main ingredients.

I used to have a bowl of cornflakes, plain pasta with cheese or fruit as a teen. It didn’t do me any harm and when I worked I bought additional treat snacks. I do remember during growth spurts being a lot hungrier which is why I give them a lot of options :)

Sounds like they need put on reins eating diddy portions of food!
Let them eat what they enjoy snacking on OP!

Actually it was rude of me. But the OP is displaying such a dour, controlling and frankly cheerless attitude toward food. She appears to have no understanding of her teenagers 'just fancying' something. Or wanting to quickly grab something on the hoof. Or even them just trying something on a whim.

Eating is about more than meal spreadsheets and calories in/out FFS. Having to constantly ask, check, explain and justify what they eat must be soul destroying for her teens.

I've had teen DDs and their mates cobbling together midnight feasts and living room picnics, and their permanently ravenous teenage boyfriends descending like a plague of locusts in the kitchen. It's just what teenagers do and trying to so heavily police what, when and how they eat just sounds so miserable for everyone.

I think she does understand, she understands fully, but it’s financial. Tney don’t have the money, which she’s basically saying but maybe not very clearly,

You're right, @Arraminta. Not having an unlimited food budget is "so miserable for everyone". How are you missing that I'm coming at this from an economic angle: it's in my title and I've referenced it in my updates. Don't you think I'd like to not have to watch our food spending? I might not be as comfortably off as you -despite busting a gut in a demanding professional career- but I'm not flippant and rude about strangers about whose lives I know very little.

Instead of giving your kids a budget each week to buy their own stuff, add that money back into the total budget and use it to bulk buy some snacks for them.

They don't come shopping every week, and not usually together; they come perhaps once or twice per month to the big weekly shop so it's not a spend I mind.

But if you pooled "their" money together, you could have a decent budget for cupboard snacks - you say you give them £10 a go, so if they come each month twice, that's £40 you could spend.

I'll put it to them and see what they say, it's a good idea. At the moment they come shopping and use it if they are into something a bit out of the ordinary or want to try something that they just want to keep to themselves -DD2 was really into making sushi a while back, for instance, and used it to buy smoked salmon, wasabi and rice vinegar. They also use it to buy the snacky foods they like, and I quite like it that they get the experience of weighing things up and making their own budgeting decisions.

OMG I grew up in a time when my Mum could only affod 1 apple a week for each of us. You are over thinking this and it doesnt get easier. Buy what you think is reasonable but focus on healthy stuff.

@MerryUmberHedgehog exactrly - such an insane world we live in where its considered 'restrictive' if your teens can't graze constantly on whatever they want. I remember my mum would not be happy if we startred eating random stuff out of the fridge....

Wow OP I think you are getting a really rough time here. Of COURSE it’s annoying when family members leave empty or almost empty wrappers in the fridge and cupboards and you’ve assumed that you have enough of an ingredient and then you don’t. As the primary chef of the house, it’s infuriating.

Are you French or from a francophone country by any chance?

I think British food culture is very different, or maybe we’re just getting old. I too cook as much as I can from scratch, which most of my British friends think is weird and OTT. But this is how people have eaten for the last few hundred thousand years so maybe we’re not the weird ones in the grand scheme of things.

All this scaremongering over EDs! You’re not going to give your children EDs by providing 3 hearty home cooked meals a day (with seconds for anyone who wants it) but not having unlimited packaged snacks in the house!

My children also love a small bowl of frozen peas. As did I and it hasn’t done me any harm. It’s not that weird, they’re sweet and tasty.