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?

I think all of this hinges on how old they are. I wouldn’t let a five year old have free rein of the kitchen but older children do need to have some level of autonomy over what they eat. If you don’t want them eating you out of house and home then you need to sit down with them and decide what they can eat when they are hungry.

My sister and I have dc the same age and they were always quite similar in what they ate till they became teenagers and then she was buying 36 eggs a week just for after school snacks. My dd was having a slice of toast for breakfast and my nephew was eating a tin of beans and four slices of toast.

We're a snacky house, can afford to stock as much as we want, and I don't really restrict snacks unless I'm about to dish up dinner. Ds might want a packet of crisps or a bowl of frozen peas 🤷‍♀️. I dont mind what it is tbh.

Frozen peas and sweetcorn to snack on? They’re not ducks?!

Is there evidence that suggests not having access to tons of snacks as a child leads to disorderd eating or are people projecting? I grew up poor. If we needed extra food it was toast, cereal or mugs of homemade soup. Im sure we never had an urge to eat numerous snacks between meals.

Money isn't an issue now but I don't overstock snacks. Tend to keep in nuts, fruit, cheese, homemade soup etc. DD can also have bread, porridge, eggs, left over dinner if she needed extra. We make soy eggs which go down well. Tend to keep treats for a saturday night. She would never dream of raiding the fridge and cooking without asking. That's selfish. She's also 'super sporty.'

Well thats embarrassing for you 🫣

I grew up on a farm so we always had lots and lots of food, because we produced so much ourselves so e.g. we had a storecupboard with over a year's supply of homemade jam in it. I don't keep in stock quite as much food as my parents did but do always have more than one week's supply. But much to my DCs disgust we have healthy snacks so they constantly complain we are an 'ingredients household'. So we don't buy biscuits or cake but we always have the ingredients to make one. There's always a selection of ready to eat carbs, salad stuff, lots of fresh, dried and tinned fruit and a few easy sources of protein so they can and do snack as much as they want. But we can easily afford to do this.

do you know @bridezillaincoming that's exactly how I read it initially.

But it's the kids choice to snack on peas and sweetcorn 😋

@TransAdmiralsAreAdmirals was complaining about the empty bags in the freezer 😄

Always loads of everything here and no restrictions and honestly we have snacks that last weeks here. It is a case of not wanting what is always in front of you I guess.

I’m impressed that your kids snack on frozen peas and sweetcorn!

Yes I do find that kids end up basically five meals a day with all the bloody snacks

If they had two cheese and ham barm cakes for lunch with an apple and a glass of milk they wouldn't need hummus and carrots at 3pm

Doh!!!

No its not!!!

No.
We have peanuts and raisins and apples and toast. Sometimes rice cakes. Only fruit is help yourself, you ask for anything else.We usually have a packet of biscuits so they can have one when they get in from school.
Packed lunch items are ritz crackers, cereal bars, oatcakes and yoghurt. I try to only get crisps for the weekend and not to think of them as a food to eat each day.

But maybe they prefer one barm cake for lunch then a snack at 3pm? Maybe that suits their bodies better? Who has decided that 3 large meals are superior to 5 smaller ones, and what evidence is that based on?
I feel sluggish after a large meal, so I don’t eat them. I eat lots of smaller ones.

No there isnt

The evidence about our eating habits tends to support the observation tht people tend to eat as they were brought up to eat, by and large and of course there are always exceptions to that

When people talk about having disordered eating as an adult due to 'restrictions' as children, its about actual restriction of food, not a generally sensible rule that you cant just have free reign (just for you Spiritadder) to any old food, all day long, that you want

To have some parameters around food intake is not akin to 'restriction'.

@timetogetlost "you ask for anything else"

you see I find this bizarre?

that my children should have to ask for food (I've obviously assumed that @TransAdmiralsAreAdmirals's children are older too)

Our teens had porridge and fruit for breakfast, made their own ham/cheese/tuna salad wraps for lunch and had a hot dinner at night. In between (so after school before clubs) they might have fruit and wholemeal toast with peanut butter and or marmite. There was always plain yoghurt and sugar free cordial, cheese and crackers in too. Homemade cake at weekends. Still the same now. Snacking on junk is so expensive and unnecessary.

🤣🤣🤣 this made me PMSL!!!

Wheres the laughing emoji when you need it

A snacky house here, and the kids (6&8) can help themselves. In reality, they usually ask, and are often prompted that they can have a snack if they want one. We have a lot of high calorie treats (biscuits, chocolate etc) as one child struggles to put on weight.

I don't think you need to provide endless biscuits and crisps, but ensuring there's some spare fruit, cereal, toast etc seems fairly basic. Tesco value bread is 2.5p per slice so it shouldn't break the bank.

Surely if kids eat a good breakfast, lunch and dinner they don’t need to be constantly snacking? A snack mid morning and one mid afternoon is sufficient surely. Otherwise they are just filling up on crap.

Mine complain that there’s never any food in the house but there’s plenty. They’re just being lazy.
when it comes to crisps or things like kitkats, they got used to a strict rule of no more than one a day. We don’t always have those so it’s usually none a day but they’d never think of having another bag of crisps if they’ve already have one.
we have bread, wraps, fillings like tuna, eggs, cheese, chicken in the freezer, noodles, sometimes biscuits and chocolate bars, sometimes home baked stuff, corn for popping, muesli/granola, fresh, frozen and tinned fruit.

I would hate to have been restricted. It would have meant once I had my own money that I’d go nuts.

Without snacks id have no food.
My mother would not let us snack unless she said so.
I was alway hungry at home.
My sister never stopped her kids from eating if they was hungry the eat, and ate what they wanted when they wanted.
All adults now and not one is a fussy eater and very healthy.

I don’t allow snacking per se and insist on proper meals. If the kids do want something to tide them over then it’s crudités and houmous, baked halloumi or apples and cheddar pieces.

Every time you eat, your body releases insulin to manage the incoming glucose (sugar). Frequent eating, including snacks between meals, means your body is continuously producing insulin. This constant exposure can lead to cells becoming less responsive or "resistant" to insulin's effects over time. I also feel that it weakens the ability to detect actual hunger rather than feeling like you need to chew on something out of boredom.

I don’t consider pasta, bread or cereal to be high value foods. Are you buying branded products? If so stop and buy the value range, they are nutritionally equivalent.

I think for teenagers you do need to have something that they are always allowed to eat, e.g. cereal, toast, sandwiches, eggs etc. But you can be clear that other things are limited. If they eat two packets of crisps a day, they will have run out of their share after a few days. Food for meals, like the frozen veg, is for meals not snacks.