Teenagers and food waste, I am losing my mind.

[JensonsAcolyte]

I don’t know if I’m being really fucking petty about this but I lost my shit yesterday after they went through a box of cereal in six hours.

Kids are 17 and 18. We also have a 9 year old. I buy nice treat food like a mug every week and the older kids just go through it like it’s going out of fashion. I’ve told them not to, obviously, begged and pleaded and shouted and sworn and nothing sinks in.

I’m at the point of thinking about locking the larder.

So on Sunday I bought a box of (overpriced junk) Krave because youngest DS loves it. He usually has a few pieces mixed in with his weetabix or porridge.

By yesterday morning it was gone. DS had got up at gone midnight and had half a box over two bowls, DD then had two bowls for breakfast, before I got up.

This is an ongoing battle. Also taking huge portions of food and not eating it. Dinner last night, DD took a huge pile and then picked out half of it (the aubergine she didn’t like) and left it on the side of her plate.

There’s a large Tupperware full of home made egg fried rice that one of them made on Saturday night while I was out and didn’t eat. I’ll be binning that in a minute.

They both like to cook but cook stupid things like a batch of thirty cheese straws. Or a huge macaroni cheese for one person. I’m constantly running out of milk, cereal, flour, eggs, pasta.

They are supposed to ask for food, which I hate making them do but have to, but then as soon as I’m out or in a meeting or even just in the fucking shower they are like locusts.

Any ideas? Is this par for the course with young adults? They are both skinny fuckers as well which is actually infuriating considering all the shit they eat.

In all honesty I don't think it matters if its shit when it comes to hungry teens, so long as it's available now
I also found they don't want to eat the same thing repeatedly, so loads of anything won't cut it.

I only had one and that was bad enough, hats off to anyone dealing with several and the food bill, ouch!

This is teenagers.

I bought a Lockabox to combat this. Obviously this is just for food cupboard stuff and they can still access the fridge and freezer. My 2 boys were going through whole packs of yoghurts and yoghurt drinks in a day, so I asked them to limit them to no more than two yoghurts a day and one drink, which tbf, they stick to. Treats, like biscuits, are then drip fed.

This takes me back ... my two are 30 and 28 don't now live at home but they definitely revert to this behaviour when they come round. Incapable of having a small glass of my "posh" orange juice. One carton will last me a week - DS2 will demolish it in one go. Likewise my small tub of favourite ice cream which lasts me about 4 servings. Gone in 1. They are ever hopeful of finding chocolate, biscuits and crisps. I still have a note stuck on the cooking chocolate container saying "do not even think about it". Note to self - DS2 coming round tonight so make sure to buy some bargain basement orange juice and cheepo chocolate.

I am so shocked by this. 28 & 30 by then I was cooking meals for my parents and as I visitor would never look through cupboards in my parents' home. I also had 2 children by then.

OP I feel your pain, I have found this Easter holiday particularly trying as we haven't been able to go away or give each other space in the way we normally would.

Could the three of you make a
Weekly meal plan? And then take in turns to make the meals each day? That way, what they cook will be a Meal for the whole household

The person cooking also has to wash up and clean up. I can't imagine anyone wanting to make an extra batch of macaroni cheese after they've done their daily meal for the family. Everyone can have input.

Op doesn’t have to put up with it.

This has been an ongoing issue for her, and she clearly doesn’t like it, so the real question is what is she going to do to stop it continuing.

Various options exist if the standard having a conversation and asking them to adopt reasonable behaviour hadn’t worked. Essentially she can either buy less treat stuff and they won’t be able to eat other people’s shares if it OR she can continue to buy it and lock it up/ration it.

What a shame to have to do either with older teens, but if they can’t respond to reason and still sneak down in the night to eat the treats of others, those remain the only options really unless she wants to engage in some kind of punishment system for the behaviour, which might be difficult and not a great idea for this age group.

And again, Op has said there is plenty of food for filling up on. There is other non treat cereal and bread etc etc. There are good sized meals. It’s not about leaving them hungry.

With regard to their taking of food designated for family meals, such as portions of meat, I’d try the labelling ‘do not eat’ or ‘needed for a main meal’. Unfortunately these arses of teens sound like they might ignore such labels.if this were the case, I would actually prepare a meal that was too small for them to have any. I would be willing to leave them hungry for 1 meal because I think they NEED to learn and not be pandered to like toddlers.

Taking the family food so there isn’t enough to prepare the family meals isn’t acceptable if the issue has been explained to them. Saying they are hungry teens does not justify it. I wouldn’t tolerate my DH doing it and I wouldn’t tolerate my kids doing it. Basic respect for other members of the family is needed from everyone and there is no justification for the teens continuing to behave like they have or being allowed to.

I think you're being reasonable to be pissed off about the quantity of food they're eating. Saying that, I was a very hungry teenager and was genuinely ravenous all the time, my own mother cooked very healthily as she learnt to cook from my Nana who was used to WW2 rationing. We barely ate carbs or protein so it's no wonder I was a skinny hungry 15 year old. It doesn't sound like that's the case with yours: I wasn't allowed anything outside standard meal times.

I think (because they're 17 and 18) you're right to make them aware that gorging constantly at your expense when you have a young child to feed isn't feasible. Nobody is really economically thriving right now, and grocery bills for a big family were high to begin with. I'd lock away all the foods you set aside for yourself and your youngest, and buy only some junk food for the older ones with the warning that once it's gone, it's gone.
I buy Krave for my lot every now and then, and it's bloody £3 per little box. It's a treat, especially since it's basically candy.

The older ones are basically adults and when they become independent, gorging on expensive stuff and wasting half a meal won't be an option. I know my realisation of that made my mum quite smug lol.

@battleaxe2000
Dd would bring a shopping bag to my house if she could!
I don't actually mind now, if I go to her house I take loads of food for her anyway.

I feel your pain. It drives me insane as well. One of my favourites is when I cook dinner, they hardly touch it and half an hour later they are cooking up some crap in the kitchen and leaving all the mess. I seem to spend a lot of my life moaning or shouting and the rest clearing up their shit. I have been heard to scream ‘take a f##king picture of what’s inside the fridge, stop standing there with the fridge door open, it’s not a bloody air conditioning unit and it doesn’t magically change its contents every five friggin minutes’ My eldest is now 23 and is a human once more. It’s good to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and there is light. It will get better. They are teenagers and selfish I have come to the conclusion they are all like it.

I don't really get all this "teenagers must eat like human dustbins" attitude. Since when has it been acceptable or necessary for them to eat vast quantities of food and snacks throughout the entire day ? I was an active teen and was on the swimming and rowing teams so did a lot of heavy duty exercise. I was at a boarding school and other than any tuck you might have bought there were 3 meals a day plus toast available and that was it. There certainly wasn't the opportunity to hoover up great catering bowls of cereal. And some of my friends managed perfectly well on this diet doing a large amount of competitive sport at a high level.

Well if they are eating vast quantities of food and are still slim and growing Kissthepastrychef then they clearly need the calories. So it's a bit shitty and weird to insist they get half of them from bread.

My 13 year old is on about 3,000 calories a day at the moment and his BMI is still dropping as he shoots up. He gets 3 good square, healthy meals a day from me and access to a balanced range of snacks for when he's hungry. The 15 year old was even hungrier until recently and is a typical teen boy bean pole.

@WombatChocolate great post. As a society we seem to have forgotten that it's absolutely fine to be hungry. I'm sure the OPs children would eat their meals if they weren't given the opportunity to graze all day long.

@Porcupineintherough have you considered that the OP might not be able to subsidise two teenagers eating vast amounts of food ? High quality food isn't cheap

High quality food isnt cheap

Feeding teenagers isnt cheap but if you have kids you kind of have to do it. And high quality food doesn't have to be expensive. Beside which it was your "let them eat toast" post I was having issues with, not the OP complaining about them wasting food - wasting food is just wrong.

i just dont buy it! My son is the same - just ploughs through it all like the whole food cupboard is exclusively his. He gets in so much trouble for it but still does it!! My dd has allergies and i made a bowl of allergy free frosting for her bday cake - he ate the whole fing thing while i hopped in the shower! Sharing bag of doritos... gone down his neck before i can sit down. He is a freakin hoover! Ice cream is another thing that's not safe - whole tub in one sitting.

Now i only buy it when it's supposed to be eaten and only one portion as leftovers get sucked down too.

I wasn't saying "let them eat toast". My post clearly stated that my boarding school peers - teens of both sexes - managed perfectly well doing a large quantity of high level sports, including rugby, sailing and riding without constant, free access to food at all hours of the day and night other than maybe a couple of slices of toast. And still managed to live to tell the tale.

@Kissthepastrychef I don't think boarding school is a paradigm of nutrition but I think our meals were less restricted than my kids' intake is at home. If you wanted 4 pieces of toast plus cereal for breakfast you could have it. Buns or biscuits at breaktime. Unlimited toast and spreads again at tea (4pm) plus cake twice a week. Plus no packed lunches, 2 cooked meals a day, one with a baked pudding. Yes it was very wheat/carb heavy and yes there were times of day when you couldn't eat, but in its own way it was scarily unrestricted. No parents to tell you to stop at just 2 pieces of toast or just 1 bowl of cereal.

@WombatChocolate

Op doesn’t have to put up with it.

This has been an ongoing issue for her, and she clearly doesn’t like it, so the real question is what is she going to do to stop it continuing.

Various options exist if the standard having a conversation and asking them to adopt reasonable behaviour hadn’t worked. Essentially she can either buy less treat stuff and they won’t be able to eat other people’s shares if it OR she can continue to buy it and lock it up/ration it.

What a shame to have to do either with older teens, but if they can’t respond to reason and still sneak down in the night to eat the treats of others, those remain the only options really unless she wants to engage in some kind of punishment system for the behaviour, which might be difficult and not a great idea for this age group.

And again, Op has said there is plenty of food for filling up on. There is other non treat cereal and bread etc etc. There are good sized meals. It’s not about leaving them hungry.

With regard to their taking of food designated for family meals, such as portions of meat, I’d try the labelling ‘do not eat’ or ‘needed for a main meal’. Unfortunately these arses of teens sound like they might ignore such labels.if this were the case, I would actually prepare a meal that was too small for them to have any. I would be willing to leave them hungry for 1 meal because I think they NEED to learn and not be pandered to like toddlers.

Taking the family food so there isn’t enough to prepare the family meals isn’t acceptable if the issue has been explained to them. Saying they are hungry teens does not justify it. I wouldn’t tolerate my DH doing it and I wouldn’t tolerate my kids doing it. Basic respect for other members of the family is needed from everyone and there is no justification for the teens continuing to behave like they have or being allowed to.

Excellent post Wombat

@Kissthepastrychef

I wasn't saying "let them eat toast". My post clearly stated that my boarding school peers - teens of both sexes - managed perfectly well doing a large quantity of high level sports, including rugby, sailing and riding without constant, free access to food at all hours of the day and night other than maybe a couple of slices of toast. And still managed to live to tell the tale.

I agree with this. I don't think much of what's on this thread is actual reality. It's astonishing the number of 'beanpole' child present when obesity is ever rising. There are very few posters who ever admit to feeding overweight children like this but clearly, on this thread, nearly every mother does so - and preens at their ability to feed their children this much food.

I don't believe it's necessary, it's habit and lockdown really hasn't helped. Children do need to eat more calories yet does it need to be such a vast amount of junk/minimal nutrient food? With their mothers looking on fondly at the thought of buying yet more crap for their greedy offspring. Nobody needs that volume of junk and OP's post was about the mindless and selfish consuming of other family members' food.

it clearly makes some feel virtuous though, mummy-bird like to over-shop ready food to make it available, day or night, 7 days a week.

I have two kids; I'd be heart-sick if food became this much of an issue that mindless eating all day long with no consideration for anybody else became an expectation.

@Porcupineintherough

Well if they are eating vast quantities of food and are still slim and growing Kissthepastrychef then they clearly need the calories. So it's a bit shitty and weird to insist they get half of them from bread.

My 13 year old is on about 3,000 calories a day at the moment and his BMI is still dropping as he shoots up. He gets 3 good square, healthy meals a day from me and access to a balanced range of snacks for when he's hungry. The 15 year old was even hungrier until recently and is a typical teen boy bean pole.

But needing lots of calories does not mean it's ok to eat everything in sight at the expense of everyone else. The volume isn't the issue here, it's the rudeness and clear disrespect for the rest of the family.

We were all teenagers once, did EVERYONE act like this?? I didn't and I don't know anyone who did. When did it become some smugly acceptable that teenagers are just rude and disrespectful about food and parents just need to buy more food and stop moaning.

What kind of adults are being created here? Would they go to work and drink all the milk in the shared kitchen, eat the whole biscuit tin or eat other people's packed lunches because they're - I highly doubt it. They just don't respect their parents.

Historically, young men have always eaten a lot. We just can't really compare like with like anymore because a lot of the foods that young men of previous generations ate no longer really exist.

My grandmother once told me they bought two loaves a day in their house in the 30s: one was the family loaf for everyone and the second, the supplementary "lads and dad's" loaf, which would be inevitably eaten with drip. So aside from three meals, the lads would load up on bread and drip, which must have been hundreds of calories per slice.

Of course, we don't eat bread and drip anymore, but a slice would roughly equate to the calorific intake of a, say, large cupcake with a lot of icing (500 calories or so). So if someone eats four of those at once, it's the same as a lad in the 30s eating four slices of bread and drip, and that was not unusual at the time at all.

@Packingsoapandwater

Historically, young men have always eaten a lot. We just can't really compare like with like anymore because a lot of the foods that young men of previous generations ate no longer really exist.

My grandmother once told me they bought two loaves a day in their house in the 30s: one was the family loaf for everyone and the second, the supplementary "lads and dad's" loaf, which would be inevitably eaten with drip. So aside from three meals, the lads would load up on bread and drip, which must have been hundreds of calories per slice.

Of course, we don't eat bread and drip anymore, but a slice would roughly equate to the calorific intake of a, say, large cupcake with a lot of icing (500 calories or so). So if someone eats four of those at once, it's the same as a lad in the 30s eating four slices of bread and drip, and that was not unusual at the time at all.

Mmmm, but I'm willing to bet most of these lads and Dads were doing physical labour, not sitting in their asses playing video games. Of course if you are working on a building site or having to walk or cycle miles to work or working on a farm or some such you are going to have a high calorie intake. I see no evidence of this is most of the descriptions here, just pure greed and boredom and lack of respect for the work that goes into getting the salary to pay for the stuff. And no, your 'child' playing soccer a couple of times a week isn't the same thing.

I don't really get all this "teenagers must eat like human dustbins" attitude. Since when has it been acceptable or necessary for them to eat vast quantities of food and snacks throughout the entire day ?

I agree. I suspect most don't need the amount they consume, they just want to eat all the junk food and parents make excuses for them. Yes teens need more calories than adults, but not significantly so. It's easy to make up 3000 odd calories without gorging. Although I know all MN teens are super tall and super skinny, and play sport for 20 hours a week and need consume huge amounts of junk food to make it through the hour.

Nonetheless, there is never an excuse for shitty, selfish behavior and the expectation that your parents must buy all the crappy food you could possibly consume. People must live in a lovely little bubble if they can just buy more.

I think why the OP is upset is because of selective eating. Eat all the cereal and junk in the house and not eat at meals. Make a ton of food themselves such as fried rice and Mac and cheese then refuse to eat it. I find it hard to believe so many of you say just buy bacon, sausages, lots of cereal and treats. People on here say how much money is tight on other threads but to buy as much food as they want.

I buy enough bread,crackers,cheese,fruit,cereal to meet my teens requirements
None of them are overweight
Would not want to make an issue out of food,particularly at the moment when I understand eating disorders are seriously on the rise