To think it's often impossible to get teens to eat healthily and the sugar tax can't come soon enough.

[Toomanytealights]

Mother of 3 teens. I have tried to teach healthy eating habits over the years- weaned on mountains of fruit/veg,restrict processed meat and red meat,restrict chips and junk. Haven't banned sugar or overly fried foods such as chips and crisps but kept them to treats. Have tried to educate them alongside, all healthy weights with no fillings. So happy days you might think except actually they eat far too much crap and getting the good stuff into them is nigh on impossible. Rarely eat 5 a day these days,love crappy junk food and they use their pocket money / dinner money( when they used to have it)to buy crap. Yes I could stop pocket money but they are 14 and 13, policing is impossible and they actually need some independence. I'm not worried about obesity or teeth but diabetes and cancer.

This weekend ds bought a 5 guys refillable drink cup with his mates and just bought 3 packets of sweets for £1 and a pocket of Oreos for 50p. I have confiscated the sweets alongside showing how 6 Oreos is his daily sugar allowance which means no weekend waffles or strudel for tea. We only have puddings at the weekend and I don't normally give him a complete sugar breakdown,I was trying to make a point.

They have packed lunches and I serve fruit/ veg with every meal. It gets left and they will happily go hungry. They get very little pocket money but I'm under no illusions they will spend it at school or before catching the bus.

So how do people get their teens to eat healthily,where am I going wrong and will this sugar tax help? How will they police crap offers like refillable cups and 3 for a £1 on sweets?

Just to say I have tried my best throughout and I'm in no way trying to sound smug. I have no reason to be,my way clearly isn't working.

If you confiscate your ds' sweets that he bought with his own money, he won't stop buying them. He just won't bring them home any more.

I don't get this obsession with eating fruit. It's mostly sugar and water, isn't it? Why is it healthier than anything else that has a lot of sugar in it? And I wouldn't eat fruit if I was genuinely hungry, either. It wouldn't fill me up.

You say your dc get very little pocket money. What happens if they want to go swimming/to the cinema/into town with their mates/buy something for themselves? What I would suggest is that you give them a weekly or monthly allowance to cover all those things, plus junk food if they choose to buy it, then they'll have to decide what to prioritise in their spending, or maybe even save some of it. If they can't go into town on Saturday because they've spent their money on junk during the week, they'll have to decide which is more important.

I can't believe you confiscated food he paid for himself! He's a teenager now - you can't control his diet the way he did when he was small.

I do wonder whether restricting children a lot when they're young just causes problems when they get older because they're not used to eating things in moderation. Not that I think snacks should be a free-for-all but if kids only get chocolate and cake at birthdays or something, of course they're going to go mad for it once they have the money to buy it themselves.

I seriously doubt the sugar tax will make any difference. I do think you are trying to control what they eat too much. Forbidden fruit and all that.
And the MN obsession with fruit.
Sigh.
I took the view when mine were teens that it was my job to educate them about nutrition and to provide healthy food choices but not to ban anything. As long as they ate the balanced meal I provided I didn't complain if they were eating puddings, sweets, crisps or bowls of cereal an hour later.
They had huge growth spurts in early teens which coincided with enormous appetites.
It passes eventually and mine are now slim adults who eat healthy varied diets and no food hang ups.

restrict processed meat and red meat

I have confiscated the sweets alongside showing how 6 Oreos is his daily sugar allowance which means no weekend waffles or strudel for tea.

You've got an unhealthy attitude to food which are you attempting to enforce on your children and they are rebelling? Amazing. What's wrong with red meat?

If sweets are the hill you want the relationship with your children to die on, knock yourself out.

Exactly what kenef said.

Over reaction to the Oreos.

Pressed send too soon..

Sounds like you're adding up their amount of sugar etc on a daily basis? Are you?

I don't see how the sugar tax will help, is an extra 10p (or whatever it is) on a can of coke really going to stop anyone. I wouldn't even notice.

It's normal for teens to eat like this unfortunately, I did and I'm a normal healthy adult now who likes fruit and veg as well as treats.

And to the pp who doesn't understand eating fruit, it is full of nutrients, vitamins, fibre etc. Can you really not see any difference between eating fruit and eating a bag of haribo?

I have teens a similar age and I don’t police what they eat. They’re both rakes with no fillings and I can’t think along the lines of cancer/diabetes yet.
Usually on a weekday daily basis they have:
Cereal (Cheerios/shreddies) w milk and juice for breakfast
Sandwich, veg, satsuma, kitkat small for lunch usually with water.
When they get home from school they’ll have another fruit, biscuit or crisps maybe some nuts or rice cakes.
Dinner is generally home cooked & healthy w brown pasta or potato for the carb. I don’t do dessert but they can have yoghurt, ice cream or another biscuit. Water to drink.
They always have money on their lunch card so can buy a snack st break and if they go out they have free reign, obviously.
they do know about healthy eating and can regulate their sugar intake. Sometimes ds asks for more sweet stuff pre-bed and I say no and point him in direction of a healthier choice. I don’t have excessive amounts of junk in the house either - never sweets, lower fat crisps, 100 calorie choc biscuits like penguin, etc don’t buy fizzy as a rule, etc.
There’s a massive difference between eating fruit & eating sweets! Fruit has vitamins, fibre, is more ‘complicated’ to digest therefore doesn’t lead to sugar highs.

I get you OP. DD now in her early twenties still remembers the first time she went swimming without an adult aged 12 and came home with a carton of ribena and a king size mars bar. I went mad. Told her this was 90 grams of sugar. Made her water down the ribena, have it over two days and cut the mars bar in three.

You're quite right to be concerned about excess sugar consumption and educate your child about the health effects of refined sugar.

However, your efforts will backfire if you try to make your child feel like a bad person for wanting lots of sugar and they will hide the evidence of their 'shameful' desires and behaviour. I would support their healthy eating by acknowledging that the pull of ever present sugary snacks can be enormous and sympathise, but try not to make a massive thing of it at this stage as it's very common for young teens to consume too much sugar, for a multitude of reasons. Continue with your house rules regarding nutrition. But don't expect to be able to control your young teenager's consumption of food outside the home. Unfortunately. All you can do is educate and support. This may well be a stage your DC is going through. If it's any consolation, my now adult DC still overindulge a bit, but they probably have a healthier diet than a lot of their peers, due at least partly, I'm sure to my hard work with them when they were younger. They eat a lot of fruit and veg. Unfortunately you can't make your child have the same preferences and attitudes to food that you have. You can only give them the best chance of wanting to make healthy choices for themselves when they're older.

@DrEustaciaBenson what an odd thing to say re:fruit - fruit is full of a range of vitamins, minerals and fibre, it’s not just ‘sugar and water’. Perhaps google and compare the nutritional profiles of some fruits with some biscuits and you’ll see.

@sparklefarts she literally said in her OP that she did it as a one off to make a point so you either didn't read her post before firing off your comment, or you chose to ignore it because you wanted to insinuate that she's a control freak

I don't think the sugar tax will make much difference tbh. Of my five dc four of them would never have used their own money to buy sweets or chocolate or crisps. As adults one of them never keeps any treats in the house (not the one who would have bought sweets as a child) because he can't leave them alone where the others don't have the same cravings.
I believe everything in moderation is fine so never actively policed what they ate because from what I saw it was those who were heavily policed who gorged at every opportunity.

You’ve done your bit, you’ve done it well, now you need to stop pushing (this will just make them push against you) and step back and don’t comment on their food choices. Then they will have their own lightbulb moments about needing to eat more healthily. A bit of junk in teenage years will not cause the diseases you fear. Don’t even look annoyed, or critical, just smile sweetly and be low key about it. Also, tell your son you got it wrong about confiscating the sweets. An apology goes a long way with teens and will make your point too.

As a child certain junk foods were very restricted and clearly set out as treat foods. Whenever Christmas, Easter etc. came around and I had a decent stash of junk I would eat it all in one go; it was sugar heaven. As a young adult, finally on my own money, I went from slim to overweight in the space of a few months as I was finally 'let loose' on everything I could eat. I didn't gain a healthy relationship with junk food until over a decade later and I won't restrict my children too much now in order to avoid the mistakes my parents made with me. All 3 slim, no fillings.

sugar tax won't make a difference you teach kids from young to avoid sugar

Teach them about nutrition rather than ruling with an iron fist - that's only encouraging rebellion.

Agree with others on here about backing off policing their food now. I've been through it once and am in the throes of second child now. No doubt third child will be the same.
You know when your baby who will eat anything turns two and suddenly realises he/she prefers some things to others and you wonder where your olive-eating perfect child had gone? Teens are thus with knobs on - the penny suddenly drops that, actually, they can eat what they want and their is nothing their parents can do about it practically
So it doesn't matter how well your primary child eats, and how sensible their choices are, and how well you have taught them about healthy eating. In 99% of cases, it will go out of the window some time between 12-14 and stay out until 17-21.
Look at it as a developmental phase, albeit an annoying one.
Anyway this kind of thread always goes the same way and will have the same responses below:

1. Someone will tell you to simply stop buying snacks and/or stop pocket money;
2. Someone else will tell you their toddler actively prefers fruit to sweets and tefuses snack foods. They will declare brightly that this is just luck, but secretly they will know that it is because of their superior parenting;
3. Someone will chastise you for not laying down ground rules when the children were smaller. They did, and have been rewarded with a seven-year-old who is very keen on healthy eating. They are sure this will continue when they are teens because the child is so sensible now.

All of the above will be from parents of babies/toddlers/primary children. They haven't got a clue. You will also probably get someone whose teens are in the 1% who don't go over to the other side and will share their superior parenting with you. All of which you will have tried anyway. I watch with interest.

I'm not fussed with fruit so much but veg yes. They eat so very little. NHS recommend 5 a day for a reason. I don't want them dying early further down the line because of lack of fruit/ veg. Re sugar 6 Oreos amounts to the recommended daily allowance,when you add in everything else it's way too much,hence my worry. Overloading on sugar every day can lead to diabetes.Again there are gov guide lines and a proposed sugar tax for a reason. I do worry,don't feel at 13/14 my job is over yet.

I have and do teach them about nutrition and had far from an iron fist. The most chilled out of all family members re kids and food. It hasn't worked.

I think that all you can do is keep doing what you are doing.

We serve up healthy meals at home and restrict the number of snacks bought - when they are gone, they are gone. I'm fully aware that the DCs buy junk when they are not at home, but at least I can try to interact by getting the odd vitamin into them! I do think this is just the same as any other teenage battle you have (e.g washing more than once a week, bedroom has to be hygienic, can't spend all day on the Playstation) - there is only so much you can do unless you are going to be dicatatorial - and that will only result in them moving out, rebelling as a young adult and poisoning the relationship with them.

Maybe it's a case of drip,drip. Eventually they'll see the light.< clutches at straws>

I just couldn't just sit and watch ds consume a whole packet or Oreos and 3 packets of sweets. Aside from anything else he has a brace.Consuming the above instead of a breakfast of homemade waffles,fruit and a small amount of maple syrup would be madness. He'd be hungry half an hour later and craving more sugar. I thought taking the sweets,leaving the Oreos and saying be sensible was a compromise.

Educate, don't confiscate.

My mum used to be like you.

I'd buy junk and hide it, I'd squirrel it away in my room. And feel guilty for eating it. I'm not blaming that for the subsequent 10 year battle with an ED but it certainly didn't help!

I have educated. School is educating.Sugar is addictive. I confiscate phones when needed and would alcohol,high energy drinks or cigarettes.

Eating vast quantities of sugar will surely raise the need for more. They have loads at special times but on a Sunday morning before breakfast it's surely a waste of money and unnecessary.

So it's obesity/diabetes v an eating disorder.

It's fun being a parent.