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.

Pick your battles. This is a phase they go through - dodgy impulse control, ad decisions. It's only for a few years, then sense will return. Don't obsess about it because that could really backfire on you.

Be careful with this whole issue of getting teens to eat what you want. As said above, pick your battles or it could backfire.
DD pretty much stopped eating in her mid teens and had some characteristics which classically align with anorexia/bulimia. We took the line of letting her eat anything she wanted - literally anything - because we just wanted her to carry on eating. She lost a lot of weight but she did carry on eating, mostly ice cream. She is now much more well balanced, tries to eat healthily and has a good understanding of her own mental health and how that connects to her eating. I am firmly convinced if we had enforced rules on what she ate she would now have a full blown eating disorder.
It is a tricky path with teenagers. You have to cut them some slack.

They sound like completely normal teenagers to me. When I was a teenager we had vending machines filled with crap in our school canteen and also an ice cream van on the school grounds! I spent all of my lunch money on absolute shite- Coca Cola, sweets, burgers and chips every day. I wasn’t overweight or obese by any stretch of the imagination, I was just a very normal growing teenager.

The sugar tax won’t make a blind bit of difference. In fact I have a friend who works in food retail and she has told me Coca Cola has suddenly become more popular since the tax! I think people naturally enjoy rebelling.

Good luck trying to control what teenagers eat .

Teens are tricky
My DC are 25 and 26 now eat v healthily 90% of the time, exercise because they want to be fit and look good
DD enjoys a few more drinks than is ideal, but has improved in last few years
DS likes a takeaway and eats more chocolate than any of us
Your early lessons and messages will count as they get to adulthood
Don’t stress too much, unless they start to develop a real problem

Well you sound fun! Pushing this on your children is not going to do them any good and will encourage them to have an unhealthy relationship with food if they're constantly calorie counting etc.

It's a packet of oreos, no need to confiscate them.

Sometimes you just need pure carbs. Hungry, tired, growing etc. Or they just can't wait for Waffles at 10am

My parents were really controlling - one biscuit a day types. No sweets, no pocket money for sweets etc. I was so grateful to be given an occasional sweet by a friend at school. Once I got a job at 16 I would eat big bags of Haribo for my lunch

Just don't make a big deal, teenagers are like toddlers. You offer it and then eat what they want.

A nasty hidden side effect of the sugar tax is that some cafes are simply no longer selling sugary drinks. A diabetic friend was nearly in trouble because her sugars were low and she couldn't find anything suitable to drink. (she ordered food but it took ages due to a mix up in the kitchen. She normally carries gel stuff but didn't have any on her)

I think where we go wrong is labellig some stuff as ‘treats’.

It sets people up as having a weird psychological relationship with food.

Staying did you not read anything I wrote? It was a whole packet of Oreos and 3 packets of sweets. For £1.50 he was able to buy what must have amounted to the recommended sugar allowance for a week let alone one day. And no I don't calorie count,think I made that abundantly clear.

I'm afraid some foods do have to be treated as treats. If I just had an anything goes approach they'd live on fries and fizzy drinks. They need to know they are ok if regarded as treats and not eaten that often.

When I was a teen my parents were very similar to us however we simply couldn't get our hands on so much crap and sugar so cheaply.

I didn't confiscate the Oreos( although a whole packet is way too much) I confiscated the 3 bags(3 for £1)of fizzy belts that went with them.

Interestingly he has saved half the packet of Oreos for after school today and had pudding after his roast yesterday. I guess some of my lecture went in. Still only ate a spoonful of veg and a couple of portions of fruit all day but hey ho small victories. Thanks for all the teen reassurance. I do sincerely hope he leaves teenhood healthy, things are very different for his generation to mine. It's hard to think so at times.

Fizzy drinks weren’t available to me as a teen at home; likewise sweets. If I wanted to snack it was toast or fruit.
As a result I never got the taste for junk food and am glad. Junk food was at parties or very very occasionally.
I was always told my teeth would rot or I would be at risk of diabetes/heart attack.
I don’t think restricting teens always backfires. Surely they want to both be and look healthy. Perhaps I was just vain!

Provide interesting alternatives
Get them involved with cooking.
If normal food is dull then they will eat crap.
I have teens, I have a cupboard that contains biscuits, crisps, chocolate. Weeks o by when it is not even opened.

I don't think restriction always backfires either, we were naturally restricted growing up - we never felt we had enough sugar but there was not enough money to buy more. My family are generally slim.
My friend's parents allowed her 3 small sweets a day - we're talking smartie sized sweets. She is very slim and disciplined about food and she doesn't have an eating disorder before anyone asks.

Biologie my generation was similar. I'm no zealot. I give him a tenner to go into town with his mates once a week. He has to pay for the bus and lunch with that and can choose. They seem to like fries and 5 Guys unlimited fizzy drink cup. I tried to suggest an M&S sandwich which would have been my teen treat (a Wimpy meal being too expensive) and he looked at me as if I'd grown horns saying "but I won't eat it". McDonalds are chucking free food at them in the form of Monopoly tokens. Picked him up last week and he was drinking a fizzy drink and eating fries he'd been given free tokens for after he'd bought his lunch. Hope these promotions are included in said tax.

It is so hard. The environment we live in does not help - takeaways everywhere, 'Super size' options, offers on unhealthy food, advertising etc.
And teens are one of the hardest groups to tackle. They don't see the long term damage they're potentially doing to themselves.

This is an interesting read:
www.who.int/end-childhood-obesity/publications/echo-report/en/

It is so hard. The environment we live in does not help

Sorry but I disagree.

I have a "treat" cupboard. It contains crisps, biscuits, chocolate.
I have teens. I often have to throw stuff out because it is past their sell by date.

Real food in our house is far tastier and appealing than trash.

Up your game OP

I doubt sugar tax will make a lot of difference - i think its the wrong way to control it - its false choice. I would prefer that sale were restricted and that schools managed it better - the free for all that is school lunches at secondary for e.g. (I am not sure its right at primary yet either). Drives me nuts that my DD is free to have pizza, chips, chocolate, baked goods etc with no control over it. Also because of the way buses for school are organised here she is at school around 8.05 - meaning she is more than able to meet friends go to the shop - buy whatever then return to school in plenty of time for the bell. I think kids should be banned from shops before school in the mornings. No inappropriate drinks available in school - water only is fine in my view, there should be a standard 2 choice menu of veggie and non veggie and it should be a proper meal. Kids should be sat at proper tables in groups and treat it as a proper sit down meal. I have no issue with a dessert of some sort. I just take issue with snacky stuff and flavoured drinks being available crammed with either sugar or sweetners both of which are not great.

You’re obsessed

I resent the fact that I'll have to pay more for the drinks/foods/sweets I like & eat in moderation because your kids are getting fat.

It won't actually stop them buying it, it just means they'll spend more of their disposable on income on these things.

Or they'll end up filling their bodies with artificial sweeteners, which have a whole different set of problems associated with them.

I never paid that much attention to what my teen ate - apart from the meals I provided, it didn't really bother me. All turned out Ok!

You're getting similar responses for three pages ... relax! You've been told 50 times there's nothing else you can do, you're doing a good job and I'm sure once your DS's skin gets a bit bad or he feels he needs to reign it in for whatever reason then he will, he knows what healthy eating is, he's just young!

Sorry but you can't see that eating a sad M&S sandwich isn't as good as AMAZING five guys fries... have you had them?

He's a teenage boy of course he's going to eat sweets! Oh okay you confiscated the sweets instead of the oreos so that makes confiscating something he bought fine. You really need to chill out.

Speakout
You are typical of someone who has been blessed with untypical teenagers and thinks it's all down to you being a super-parent.
You are not. You have been lucky but you won't see that.
Seriously, is their any fussy child - toddler or teen - who has been cured of their 'habit' by helping to cook meals???
It is always cited on MN - along with eating as a family - as the go-to way to prevent fussy eating.
Well, I have done both with all of mine and STILL have had picky toddlers/teens.
Comments anyone?

Yeah yeah-

Badly behaved kids - parents' fault.
Well behaved kids- luck.