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?

So those with grazing kids eating unlimited crisps etc. how do you ensure they are not full of snacks come tea time and can't eat their meal or not leaving food at meal times because they know that they can eat snacks all night which are nicer than their vegetables?

Absolutely. I think it’s important that kids aren’t hungry and what you’re describing they sound hungry. You’re at real risk when they’re older of saying you didn’t feed them properly. Not saying your cupboards have to be stuffed with shite they can eat whenever but the way you describe it is very rigid. They can’t even have a snack when peckish? Or later on after tea?

My kids have a snack cupboard (6&8) with a variety of snacks in, there's always a fruit bowl filled (Uber eats on Mondays 50% off is a life saver) and extra fruit in the fridge. My daughter will pick a baby cucumber over a cupboard snack, which I can't blame her for I could eat hundreds of them a day.

I've tried to not restrict their eating because I suffered with bulimia for many many years because of how controlling my mum was with food. No sugar , organic / vegetarian only, pre packaged food at parties only, other food may kill us etc. this sort of behaviour will just lead to disordered eating and unhealthy relationships with food imo.

I usually have some low cost snacks available which are available to anyone who wants them. Over the last 2 weeks for example, there was:

12 boiled eggs - bought on yellow sticker so cost £0.95

Homemade flapjacks - we had the ingredients so not sure of the cost, probably about £2 for 12 portions?

Homemade veg soup - made out of the left over veg we had in the fridge

About £6 worth of seasonal fruit

Large tub of natural Greek yogurt - to have with honey which we already had

Frozen blackberries to go with the yogurt - free as we picked them earlier in the year

I don’t restrict food, but I do ask them to consider if they are hungry or bored if I think they are eating excessively

Honestly Op. your way does seem a bit grim. We generally allow unlimited fruit if the kids are hungry and I just do a top up shop if needed. I have three teens who always are hungry despite 4 meals a day. I would have hated to grow up in a house where I had to ask to eat an extra apple or restrict ketchup use but then I accept that we are able to afford top ups and it would be different if we couldn't.

I don’t ration raisins, sweetcorn or cereal, no…

Yes and no. Kids can eat as much fruit as they like, and stuff like bread cheese on toast and jam on toast.
I limit unfilling crappy snacks like crisps and cakes and biscuits.
If someones hungry I say, eat a banana and an apple then tell me if you still want another snack.

i was just hungry. Was mucking out horses before school then doing netball/running and riding 2 horses after school plus all the yard jobs that go with that
especially in winter was burning a lot of calories

@BoysBagsShoes

"Nope! If there were unlimited snacks to be had, DSD and DP would graze non-stop.

They are like hoovers.

I came into their lives when this pattern had already been set and despite my best efforts they have no ‘off’ button and it drives me mad.

and so, what........?

You are their food police?

Well, when it's close to dinner time I just tell them no snack but can have a baby cucumber or apple. Rarely have an issue with them eating their dinner. If there is an issue where they haven't eaten properly, I'll make them wait a while before allowing a snack.

The cupboard is there for them but there are still some rules to make sure they're eating meals and not just filling up on snacks. I also pick vegetables and salad I know they eat and enjoy now they're older, rather than just making them eat something I know they dislike. My kids are very good at self regulating and don't over eat because food has never been restricted. I just chucked birthday cake away from last Tuesday because neither of them wanted more than 1 slice. It was sat there all week and they had no interest.

My son has ASD too so is quite fussy, I make food that he definitely enjoys (usually tuna related/ chicken noodles/ pasta with chicken or tuna and sauce etc) with peas or broccoli or cucumber/tomatoes strawberries grapes, whatever's in the fridge.

Absolutely not! But what I try to do is ensure my family is healthy and well-fed. Funnily enough the other items I’ve mentioned are always left untouched and it’s the snacks that are high in sugar and fats that are hoovered.
It’s also really expensive to be replacing unnecessary snacks on a daily.

You need to give them more food access. Toast, peanut butter, bananas and fruit. Pittas, hummus. Maybe consider a pack of biscuits and a few bags of crisps each per week, too.

You sound like you are taking it a bit far, monitoring their ketchup usage for example, or giving out to them for eating frozen peas!

I don’t encourage random snacking, it’s a bad habit for life. I tell them to make a proper snack that will fill you up if you are hungry / don’t just start eating random stuff. . I give them 3 meals and one snack a day. However, they all go through very hungry phases, where they will eat crackers with cheese, nuts, wheetabix or fruit ect…. between these meals. One of mine does a lot of sports and is absolutely starving and will often reach for these additional snacks.

I think you need to lighten up on it a bit.

Could you buy a couple of cheaper packets of crackers and some extra cheese and some cheaper packs of dried pasta and jars of passata...tell them aside from the extra fruit you have bought that the snacking options are cheese & crackers or pasta and you need to keep the rest of the food for meals. Or the odd time buy some cheap chocolate bars to melt and lidl/aldi brand rice krispies/corn flakes and allow them to make some buns as a treat for you all, all thats needed is to melt the chocolate and stir in the cereal and leave to refridgerate, its a very cheap but very tasty treat to have the odd time...all of this could be purchased for an extra £10/£12 to your weekly shop...if you could afford that? I do think kids/teenagers need a lot more food as they are growing and denying it to them might lead to problems down the line.

I wouldn’t stop my family eating veggies and fruit as long as it didn’t affect their appetite.
Maybe what you think is enough food isn’t enough for them? I used to go to my mother’s house for lunch and she’s put out a salad which frankly would barely feed one person but she thought was enough for three. I told her and as salad is healthy she didn’t mind us eating more. Her appetite was just small and she couldn’t see that it wasn’t enough. She always had a slice of bread and marmalade at the end and I pointed out that was because she was still hungry!
Don’t restrict your family from eating healthy food, if it’s a budget thing explain it to them and maybe work out together a solution.

They must be pretty desperate if they’re eating frozen veg. Bread and bananas aren’t very expensive. I would never restrict that. You’ll give them a lot of issues with food. It’s clearly already happening if they’re raiding the freezer for frozen veg. Perhaps they hope you won’t notice

Grapes or carrots cut in to sticks also can be a good but affordable snack

I don't buy processed junk and i don't encourage eating continuously/ mindlessly between meals except fruit/salad.

I buy a lot of things like carrots and make big bowls of hummous.

I home bake things like flapjacks & biscuits but they don't have free/unlimited access to anything sugary.

I find they pester/reach for snacks when bored. If they are busy the problem goes away.

Yes, always fruit or yogurts or crepes to snack on.

My teen can’t be bothered with the ‘admin’ of things like toast/eggs on toast/pasta and always wants a ready supply of as yet unspecified instant snacks. He doesn’t know what he wants. Just not what we’ve got. He’s perpetually hungry. Fruit doesn’t do the job and I hear that to be fair. It’s not filling.

Drives me mad but it’s just growing kids.

Make bigger portions of healthy meals, make sure there's plenty of meat/protein and enough carbs for active kids.

Big casseroles, lots of potatoes on the side, loads of root veg & greens. Serve up big portions, make a homemade dessert like a blackberry pie or a rice pudding with apple sauce.

I would cut back on everything else before I would cut back on food.
If they are having a growth stage they will need to eat more than 3 basic meals a day. Its reasonable to not provide an unlimited supply of Percy pigs Doritos but quite another that you limit bread to make toast.

For a toddler or primary aged child, not for a sporty 15year old.

We always have some additional food in (I loathe the word snack)
When we had teenagers we had specific areas they could take snacks feom. It was not help yourself. They could also always make popcorn with the popcorn maker and kernels.

Rule was no food after 5pm as we would be eating soon.

I bake our own bread and we always had peanut butter, jam, chocolate spread and honey for food that way if hungry.

Carrots were also always there.

Cheese, ham, salami, raw food they knew to ask before they used. However anything on the help yourself area was free. We often had pot noodles, pesto and pasta.

I dislike only eating 3 times a day. My IBS cant tolerate the level of food I need at that point to sustain a day. So I tend to be more of a grazer with 6 smaller meals over the day. My.kids and dh graze as well.

@Enko i think the term snack is the issue. I said above mine have unlimited access (teens) to snacks but I guess it depends what you consider a snack. Frozen veg is not a snack.