To think.. there is a weird obsession with snacking?

[helpmeplease2045]

I have two DC age 6 and 3.

My 6yo has a pretty big breakfast (bowl of porridge with fruit and often second bowl of muesli or cereal for e.g.), we then provide them with a morning snack (maybe piece of fruit) for school, then two hours later they have school lunch then after school parents are handing over more snacks (ranging from fruit to biscuits, cakes, crisps, sandwiches etc), then a snack at home / at a playdate / children's party. There are snacks after activities / on the way to activities.. all this before dinner.

Sometimes I feel like it's a constant battle to stop kids from constantly eating all day! When I was younger we had bkfast, morning snack maybe on a school day and school dinners then we waited till the evening meal. I don't think little children need a constant supply of (often sugary) treats throughout the day.

AIBU to not want my small children to be eating something every two hours!?

Maybe I'm just odd but I can't help thinking that

(i) kids are skinnier than when I was a wee 'un
(ii) kids eat much more healthily then when I was small.

I can't help thinking that so many kids are thin these days, whereas when I was at school we were not so much fat as maybe a bit pot-bellied?

And we had a whole range of sugary things for breakfast and no one thought anything of it. Ribena was considered healthy and so were those fake juice things. My mother made me cake and biscuits to take to school and I had a white bread sandwich or money to buy from tuck, where there were few healthy options, but lots of crisps and sweets. When I came home I got scones, pikelets, muffins or crumpets and then dinner was always meat and three veg with pudding! And I wasn't unusual. I went to school in the 70s when hommous wasn't invented :) and when a carrot stick was something you scooped up a cream cheese dip with still is for me.

I don't get people when they say I don't let my dc snack but they have access to cheese or the fruit bowl, umm I think some cheese or a piece of fruit is a snack surely?*

Yy

I think a 3/4pm snack makes sense if you're not eating dinner till 6/6:30.

When I was young evening meal was tea at 5 so no need for an afternoon snack but we prefer to wait till at least 6.

Just to further defend snack as not just "you'd probably find you didn't need to if you just tried"; I do genuinely believe there's a case for snacking when building a positive and healthy relationship with food.

When growing up we did not snack. We had to wait until meals then we were so hungry we stuffed our faces knowing we would be hungry by the next meal. We were too hungry to adequately hear what our bodies was telling us about how much we needed to eat, and we felt we HAD to overeat in case we got hungry later. I got a bit chubby for a while. As did my brother.

As an older teen I took over responsibility for feeding myself/preparing all my own meals/buying my own food. I allowed myself to eat what I was hungry for when I was hungry for it, not suffer hunger and loss of concentration, making myself starving for the next "big meal". I know full well that saved my relationship with food before I was too set in my ways.

I want this for my children. I don't want them to feel they have to "stock up" at meals. If they don't want to eat much dinner because they were starving for a sandwich two hours earlier, fine. It goes in the fridge or freezer. It can be eaten another time. Mealtimes should revolve around your needs, not the other way round! For us anyway, I know it's not always practical. Eat when you're hungry, don't when you're not. Honestly if anyone raised an eyebrow at me giving my child a snack I'd think that was pretty small minded.

Blimey Spartacus where/when did you go to school, if you think kids are skinnier now, given that 1 in 3 are overweight/obese?

I think young children are often expected to sit and be quietish at times when they wouldn't be expected to when I was a child. The sitting for an hour in Costa with the accompanying rounds of snacks didn't happen.

Thing is you get different types of eaters, just being human does not put us in one box.

I'm a grazer, I hate big meals, facing a big plate full of food is very off putting and I dislike the feeling of being full. Grazing throughout the day suits me much better. Really, as others have said, it's only the society we live in which dictates when we "should" eat.

70s. There were a few fat kids, but mostly we were .... chunky? Sorry but I just don't see the fat kids that seem to have caused such a moral panic, I really don't! There are a few I see and I think they are a bit large, but not in epidemic proportions. Maybe a way of putting it is that in my day there were not the extremes there are now, but we all tended more towards the chunky end? ???

Well yes, an alarmingly obese society, chit.

I blame the baby food industry.
It is they who deem it necessary to fill up babies and toddlers on breadsticks, fruit wraps and carrot puffs!
Parents are then pushed into thinking their toddlers need a regular snack .....and to be fair, some do. Low blood sugar levels stay balanced with smaller, more epregular meals but I think it's kind of gone all out OTT.

The baby food industry send sample products to health professionals, including midwives, and so the ball started rolling (I'd say late 90's onwards).....where even health visitors, then schools, then the NHS are encouraging snacking. If you think about the yellow NHS advert (healthy living, swap project thingy) where they don't simply say don't eat snacks....they tell people to swap this (bad food) for that (good food)....even though the good food is still a snack.

I was a 70s child too Spartacus and the majority of kids were definitely much slimmer than today - as were the majority of adults.

I do think some people have trouble spotting fat children though, given there are so many of them.

So a slightly overweight child often looks quite 'skinny' next to their fatter peers.

Over 64% of adults are now overweight/obese too, so it's probably getting harder for everyone to spot.

I have a completely unreasonable hatred of the word "snack".

Snack, snack, snack.

/misses the point

No sorry worra , I disagree that the timescale of your food intake creates obesity.

It's what you eat that causes obesity.

my kids don't have any snacks. Im in the minority where we live.

my kids have:
breakfast - bowl porridge or cereal
lunch - sandwich + fruit + handful of crisps + yoghurt
dinner - main meal followed by pudding (fruit, yoghurt, crumble and custard etc)

My kids also only drink milk and water and are not allowed juice or squash.

I don't get the snacking thing either. I was never allowed to snack as a child.

My kids do not gorge themselves at meals to keep them going until the next meal. They are all between 50-75% percentile.

I think we all need to feel hunger every day, as a way to manage how much we eat. Snacking a lot encourages people to eat when they don't feel so full, but not actually hungry. I don't think it is a coincidence that the French who are much thinner, do not snack.

That works for your children living and that's great. I would have a child in crisis if I tried it with my middle child. Proper, full on autistic meltdown crisis. By 11:00 he would be incapable of rational thought and could be a danger to himself and others. He needs snacks.

We all have different body chemistry, so I think it's fair to say that people have different food needs.

Wasn't sibling you out on purpose by the way living, your post was just near to the end of the thread so was easier to reference :)

Singling*

I don't buy in "snack" foods as a routine, but there is food avaliable upon request. My DCs aren't in the habit of asking and will ask sometimes out of hunger rather than as a routine. DS1 will have a school dinner between 12 and 1, we have dinner after 7pm so we can eat in one sitting as a family. On a quiet evening mooching around with Lego/ TV, he is fine. On our busy evenings when he has sports clubs, I will give him something as it is a long gap to maintain even blood sugars when being active.

I notice that DS1 naturally has less appetite in the morning and his increases through the day. DS2 is more hungry in the morning and will often have "two breakfasts", and his appetite diminishes through the day.

What really matters is that children eat the right amount that they burn off and use for growing, and that it's balanced in nutritional content. It can be achieved through a grazing approach with light meals, but that requires careful consideration. Items marketed as snack products are more likely to cause peaks and troughs in blood sugar- there is a correlation between the growth of this market and increases in childhood obesity amongst various other contributing factors.

I didn't keep snacks in the changing bag as a pacifier. Enough space was taken up with an emergency long life meal for DS1's allergies and the tub of ginger nuts so he did have something safe avaliable if in a situation where snacks were being given out so he wasn't going to be left out.

What we do works for us. We are rarely ill, fit and active and of a healthy build and have a decent intake of food, although nothing to set up a blog about

"The trouble is 'snack foods for children' are a whole massive market now and are often unhealthy sugary carby crap claiming to be healthy just because they have some raisins in or something."

"If you think about the yellow NHS advert (healthy living, swap project thingy) where they don't simply say don't eat snacks....they tell people to swap this (bad food) for that (good food)....even though the good food is still a snack."

YYYY to all this

It is absolutely unacceptable under late capitalism to say: “do not consume” Alternative, expanding, and preferably still more profitable patterns of consumption are always being thrust under our noses as the answer. Our children are paying the price: first with their bodies, which won’t thrive trying to process all this crap, and then with the world that is left to them with all this trash being created and discarded.

In my experience, medium sized children need 4 meals: breakfast, lunch, tea and supper. (You can either give them a proper tea early and in that case they’ll want something before bed; or you can delay dinner to a more adult time, and in that case they will want something after school.) None of this food needs to be junk carbs packaged in individual servings carried about in handbags.

It all makes me very sad.

I also think adults are obsessed with snacking now too. "Energy Balls" are all the rage right now, particularly in the health and fitness community, along with the usual smoothies, protein bars, kale crisps etc. I can understand the need for snacks if someone works a job with crazy hours which make scheduling full meals difficult, but I question this snack obsession for most.

It's worth noting that in places like Japan, Italy and France, snacking just doesn't happen traditionally. You eat filling meals and that's it. The eating habits of these countries are starting to change as they become westernised, and the waistlines are expanding as a result.

I have been childminding for the last few years and my goodness the kids seem to snack non stop, with their parents approval. The first couple of children i minded the parents supplied the snacks and although they were fairly healthy the sheer volume was nearly overwhelming. Now i supply the snack and its mostly fruit but my mindees would eat non stop if i let them, and its not that their meals are too small, they eat the same amount as me and they are only 3 and 4. I have noticed it out and about too, parents seem to divvy out snacks non stop. It must cost them a fortune.

I snack. I eat when I'm hungry which is what snacking is in my opinion.

The issue isn't snacking, it is what is considered a snack. So healthy snacks are fine (eh hummus, cheese, fruit and veg etc).

I would like evidence for the claim that a) snacking is making us fatter (I think it's the lack of exercise and high carb diets) and b) that it's a western thing

I will add, I've snacked since I was a child. I'm a size 8/10.

At my gym people drink water (not Lucozade) whilst training and then maybe have a banana as they leave. All this isotonic sea kelp bollocks is totally irrelevant for anyone but the highest performing athletes, not Johnny who's done half an hour on the cross trainer in his new Nike vest.

For me, it's a matter of concentrating on what you're doing.

There was a weird thread a few months back asking 'What are you snacking on right now?' And I thought 'I'm a grown up. I'm not snacking on anything.'

If I'm reading a book or watching a film or walking in the park, I want to focus on the book or the film or the spring flowers. I don't want to be rummaging in my bag and finding stuff to eat.

Part of growing up is being able to do delayed gratification. (Which is not the same as starving yourself.)