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.

No thanks. I'm not going to waste my time reading anything written by somebody paid to cover up the damage high fructose syrup and sugar consumption has done to the health of America.

I’m with you op 100%. I’m rather shocked by the attitude of some of the posters here. Perhaps they’re in the ‘cba to argue, anything for an easy life camp’. My mother was a dentist and she saw first hand the effects of sugar on childrens’ and teenagers’ teeth. It was blatant. When kids are growing they need all the nutrients they can get, and encouraging them to adopt healthy eating habits right the way through their teens is important.

Btw I agree it’s a battle; it feels never ending at times, and I think it’s important to try to take the battle element out of it by making compromises. Eg I’ll feed the dds their supper pretty much as soon as they get in so they have something nutritious when they’re hungry. I also don’t expect them to eat what dh and I do all the time, so I’ll prepare meals that they will like such as Mac and cheese with broccoli, or noodles with chicken and peppers...

I wish people could just relax a bit over these things, and be grateful that you have happy, healthy kids.

This!

I am relaxed.

They had a shed load of chocolate at Easter,get tenners and free choice for lunch out with mates at the weekend,ice cream and pizza Sat night,fish and chips school dinner Friday...

I would however like them to eat their 5 a day,not have a constant battle with requests for shite and not have teenagers who think eating three packets of sweets and a packet of biscuits in one sitting is ok.

Carding about what they eat or their future health doesn't mean I'm not appreciative of having children who aren't seriously ill.

I don't know what to say because god knows my DC have all had phases of eating rubbish in large volume. I tend to take a route of little resistance by just carrying on providing a variety of foods at meals. No requests for options here they just eat what is on offer.I turn a blind eye to snacking.as others have said it's a phase.i don't make comments as I don't want to push them into a corner.

Um (I HATE that affectation on MN with a vengeance!) does it matter what anyone else thinks as you are convinced you are right, OP?
I do wonder why you posted in the first place, tbh.

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

Up your game OP
This is a very silly comment - I put a lot of effort into it and I would say that it is generally the opinion around our dinner table, that I am a good cook who produces interesting and tasty fresh food, the teens even cook for the family every week but they still like to eat juke and lots of it (and it is too cheap) and then they still eat their dinner. I think they will calm down eventually - but at 14 I'm trying to let them make their own choices in as many things as possible.

it's surely a waste of money and unnecessary.

Isnt that your childs choice OP if its their money, or are you that controlling and abusive you dont see it?

I sort of get where you are coming from OP, but I am not too stressed out as I am playing the long game

So I cook healthy food (any meal contains veg, but am not paranoid about red meat or fat or carbs) and the kids (13 and 15) are learning to cook too.

I know that in between the healthy meals they will eat sugar/junk.

But I hope they will grow up craving nice proper food. To me, craving sweets etc is a childish thing lots of people grow out of. I did (mostly). My brothers and their mates gorged on junk in between their mums lovingly cooked meals. All grown up now, and eat normal food.

I sometimes guide the DC a bit re healthy eating habits, but I don't lecture. I just hope they grow out of it

Do you not remember the absolute cravings for sugar when you had growth spurts? I do. Once I hit 18/19 or so, my love of junkfood disappeared.

It's a childish thing they'll grow out of. Just keep serving the nice good food in between

OP you are lucky your dcs are not overweight, so concentrate on getting good nutritious food into them at meal times - they are energetic enough to need calories at this age, they will grow out of this.

When i was 8 i was sent to an NHS dietician by the GP I really wish i could put a photo of me up on here of me just prior to this because you would think WTF!

after a month i went back to be weighed and had lost 5 pounds Dietician told me off and said it wasnt good enough. 1981.

Im sure this negative reinforcement didnt help at all.

We have to be so so careful with the messages we send children and young people over food.

Peanut Immliking the long game thing. Yes I can remember wanting sugar at times but actually I often couldn't get it. That is what worries me. My kids can,very easily. I'll try to worry less but the fact is things are very different now for teens.

Controlling and abusive.pmsl

Yes it's his money but it's still my job to teach him money skills and the need to monitor sugar intake.

Isn't scoffing an entire pack of biscuits a teenage rite of passage?

I’m really fed up about the sugar tax actually, because rather than take the sugar tax hit, all the drinks I like have ch aged their recipes and tastev vile. It’s not like I bought them much anyway, but i won’t at all now. It’s not as though sweeteners are good for you! I really don’t see why companies couldn’t produce a new “tax avoiding version” alongside their old recipes and let people make the choice.

I think Helena educating kids over sugar is very different to scolding a child for not losing weight. It's interesting how wanting kids to eat less sugar is deemed as wanting them to lose weight. The two are very different. The former is taught in school.

i was scolded for losing 5 pounds

Educating kids over sugar is what should have happened 37 years ago instead of sending kids to dieticians

How come he had pudding after his lamb roast? Given he didn’t eat all his veg and avoided any meat that had touched the “fancy rub”? Surely feeding kids 101 is no pudding if you don’t wat your main - or at least the veg part!

Go back to basics, OP, before you worry about the odd teen binge.

Very little has changed in 20 years.

When I was 13 I spent most of my dinner money on junk food and most weekends my friends and I would shovel in as many Maccy D burgers as we could afford.

None of us were fat. None of us did any exercise outside of PE lessons. None of us are fat now.

Just you wait, once they start trying alcohol their sugar intake will quadruple!

Educating kids over sugar is what should have happened 37 years ago instead of sending kids to dieticians

37 years ago the dieticians would have told them to get the majority of their calories from carbohydrates. The reason for a lot of scepticism about dietary advice from those of us over fifty is that the orthodoxy now is precisely the opposite of the orthodoxy of our younger years, and in particular a lot of us have had to work quite hard shifting the weight we put on from all that pasta and rice we were told to eat.

See also: switch from butter to margarine! No, switch to oil! No, switch to margarine! No, switch to butter! Twenty years ago, I was berated by my doctor for admitting that I only cooked with olive oil and butter, and didn't have margarine in the house. I doubt I'd have that discussion now.

Really Strange

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/277450.php

Yeah perhaps I should have said no pudding. We only have a nice one though on a Sunday and ice cream on a Sat. The rest of the week it's yog if they finish everything which he never gets as he never does. I try to relax a bit at the weekend.

When I said that very little has changed in 20 years I meant in terms of teenagers wanting things that they shouldn't or can't have.

It's pretty simple. If you spend too much time trying to control what your teenagers eat they'll rebel. This might create adults that have issues with food and binge on the stuff that mum used to restrict which could ironically lead to obesity and dun dun derrr diabetes!

I know way too many adults with weight issues that lump food into "good" and "bad" categories (don't get me started on Slimming World and its "syns"). Food is fuel but its also pleasure. Let your kids find their own balance!

why bother posting in AIBU if you won't accept you are and are just defending yourself to everyone?

I have 4 teenagers. DS1(18 years) has a shocking diet , lives on Tesco meal deals and probably has one or two decent meals per week with the family , he works unsocial hours and sleeps most of the day. Ds2 ( 17years) is a health freak - takes a high protein, low carb diet, works out at the Gym a lot and lectures everyone else on too much sugar !! DS 3 ( 15years) can eat a packet of sugary biscuits or cereal in a sitting, so much so that I have to hide things. DD ( nearly 13years ) has always been reasonably healthy , had always liked fruit and some veg, but now even she has turned into a sugar addict. I rarely go into her bedroom as it's a tip but did the other day and was shocked to find a full carrier bag full of biscuit packet wrappers, sugary sweet things etc. She is clearly buying it herself and smuggling it in but she has put weight on so I need to try to do something. I remember being about ten and overweight and my mum asked the lady in the corner shop to stop selling chocolate to me. I was mortified and embarrassed at the till. That wouldn't happen nowadays and I could not do that to my child !! It's so hard to know how to handle it though - I can't stop them having money, or dictate what they spend it on. I have always tried to give them sweet things in moderation but it just seems like an addiction now. Eldest son has been bemoaning the fact that the Lucozade recipe changed recently and how terrible it is , he has been going to the small corner shops in the locality to buy up the last remaining full sugar 'old recipe' Lucozades he is so distraught !!!