To never buy snacks/squash/sweets etc again

[Fiera]

Every single time there is somthing remotely snackly in the house it just gets taken and eaten. The large double concentrate bottles of squash gone within 24 hours, any kind of sugary cerial gone the same day they come through the door.
I dont like to use the word 'steal' but tonight its the only word i can use because my daughter actually STOLE my can of coke.
We never usually buy coke or Fizzy anything, nut it was my eldest sons birthday and all the children had a can as a very rare treat. My daughter actualli hid my can up her sleeve (after having drank hers earlier in the evening) and went and drank it in her bedroom.
Even my toddler daughters 'treats' like 'GoGo' biscuits and 'Goodies' puffs just disapear before she even knows theyre there.
We have a full fruit bowl, two actually, every day and even they get emptied. They have hot meals every day so theyre not 'hungry' just greedy.
I just dont understand why they do it and im seriously considering just not buying again.
My toddler will happily drink water (theres hardly ever any squash left for her anyway)

Locking or hiding food away is bonkers

Lethal. Really? Is it? Yes we all like to think our kids have the self discipline not to over eat but many don’t.
We have a problem with obesity in the U.K. My kids were not but I had my eyes opened when sil dc came to stay a week over the summer holidays. All three were obese and it was easy to see why. They arrived with 5 bags full of junk food. Sil said her kids wouldn’t manage without some treats but I wasn’t to worry, there was some healthy food in there, yoghurt and stuff. I assume by this she meant the pots of flavoured kids yoghurt! Certainly not the litres of fizzy drinks, packs of jammy dodgers. Fun size bags of sweets etc etc...
Giving them open access to the biscuits meant they would go for these and them pick at the meal I made later. Im honestly not that bad a cook! Plain enough roast chicken, potato, peas, carrots. Spaghetti Bol n salad. Cottage pie etc.
I put all the sweets in top cupboards but they got chairs and cried and sulked when I forbade them until after meals. It was like a compulsion for them.
My solution as I’ve said before is just don’t buy em. If kids are hungry they will eat proper meals.

OP is buying too much shit. My guess is its not a treat at all, but the teens are used to eating the crap and so are addicted to easy access food. Lock the toddlers snacks in a lock box and don’t give the teens anything. It’s a behavioural problem. No teen needs to drink a whole bottle of squash in a day.

We have this at work !! So we now get healthier snacks ie
Bananas galore

Rice and corn cakes
Hunmous
Raisins

This happens in my house too (4 teens) if I buy any of that stuff - so I don't! I don't buy squash or fizzy drinks, don't buy biscuits or crisps. If I do it's if we're all sitting down together for the evening (film or games night) or on the understanding that when they're gone they're gone.

I do wish they'd leave the icecream alone though....

I buy my ds 4 "salt your own" crisps from aldi and take the sachet of salt out,once they're gone though that's it I won't buy more until the next big shop

I know it isn't what you meant, but I read this as you giving your DS '4 crisps' as his daily ration and I didn't even bat an eyelid that someone on here would say that.

I don't know why people are going mad at the OP it's ridiculous and the children do sound greedy.

OP I think when I was a teenager I couldn't control my eating either, I wasn't overweight but I would stuff my face with whatever I could get hold of.

In this case I would get a locked cupboard for the treat foods and on an evening or whenever you wanted you could distribute, eg one packet of crisps or one chocolate biscuit each. It sounds extreme but they can't fill up on crap all the time and if they have access to other healthy food then that's ok.

@nursy1 that's scary. Really doing the children a disservice by feeding them like that. Constant grazing and snacking is often ignored when people add up their calorie count for the day so it also leads to denial about why people are fat.

Having a lockdown cupboard for food is utterly disturbing. No wonder these is obesity if that’s how people parent now

BarbaraOfSeville 😁

Having 'goodies' locked in a cupboard almost sounds like a challenge tbh

My mum was on a permanent diet when I was growing up and so these kinds of foods were seen as the work of the Devil and eaten only very, very occasionally. So what happened when us children grew up and left home? We binged on this stuff because we could. It had been denied to us so much that we gorged on it now that it was readily available and there was no one at home to judge us for eating it. As such, we have unhealthy relationships with food.

It's all about the emotional attachment to food and that can happen in families where unhealthy foods are banned, and ones where unhealthy foods are plentiful. If people would just stop making a fuss about food and tying it up with rewards and being happy it would be much simpler.

@angry - but you were grown adults when you made the decision to stuff yourself full of junk. So how does it apply to the OP’s kids who are kids? I don’t think it does. OP’s kids are having this junk bought for them.

The op is cross because her daughter drank 'her' coke - who's the one being 'greedy there? if I had a can if coke in the house I wouldn't give 2 hoots who drank it, kids relationship to food starts with the adult - op needs to be the example she wants to set.

I probably drink around 750ml to a litre of squash (diluted) a day, and I'm out at work all day, where I mainly drink water and occasionally a fruit tea. Given we're meant to drink at least 2 litres of water a day I'm probably just about hitting that.

@Fash84 - you're not hitting 2 litres of water a day if you're counting 750ml of squash towards that total. Diluted squash isn't "water". Water is water. If you add anything to water, you make it a food.

I'm not necessarily advocating drinking 2 litres of water a day btw, I'm just saying that anything that's not water, well, isn't water...

I don't get why or how people introduce squash into their children's diet and then complain when they drink gallons of the stuff. There's no need for it. Just give water and milk from the off and you'll never have an issue with "won't drink water" or heaven forbid "doesn't like water" .

If you teach your child to drink milk and water and eat cheese, bread and apples you can feed them adequately pretty much wherever you go.

Where on Earth did that claptrap come from
albertasimmons? Squash counts towards your water intake, as does tea. No reason why it shouldn’t.

I really want a can of coke now after reading this

GP & MW seem happy with my 'water' intake even tho i don't drink anything other than squash 🤔

Thanks sprinkles, only on MN would an adult be challenged for drinking sugar free squash. At least it's not full of caffeine or sugar! The NHS advice includes squash when referencing fluid intake

@sprinkles - 8 cups a day is the bare minimum you should have. Personally don’t count the other drinks as caffeine is a diruetic and saying drinking sugary squash instead of water is healthy is laughable.

Everyone knows you should drink 8 cups a day of fluid

It’s not true that only pure water counts towards those 8 cups. I thought everyone knew that

Also who said is healthy? It’s fluid. Keeping your kidneys pumping, your skin hydrated etc etc. Your body doesn’t care that it started as squash.

I drink Robinsons barley water at lunch and it's got no sugar and just really adds a bit of taste - pretty sure that's ok to count as water.

Squash might count towards your fluid intake, but I don't think you can argue that it's good for you. It might be mostly water, but the rest of the ingredients are hardly healthy ones.

Well maybe you can tell us what the other ingredients do to you that’s so awful?