To think people (especially children) don’t need to be eating constantly?

[constantlyeating]

NC because I am going to get flamed for this.

I’m wondering whether this is why we have an obesity crisis. We are all constantly snacking!

For children it seems to have become: breakfast, morning break snack, school lunch, snack on the way back from school, dinner and then another something before bed— if not more often.

Does anyone have just 3 meals a day anymore? What ever happened to food only being eaten at the table?

When I were a lad, we only ever snacked on coal, every second Wednesday. And we had to mine it ourselves.

Who decided 3 meals a day was the best eating strategy? Probably employers who didn’t want people stopping work to eat.

Different cultures and countries have different eating habits. As long as you get the right amount in and put the right energy out, does it really matter how many meals that is?

I guess, but I suppose the problem is that snacks probably consist of 'snack food' for most people. If people were eating 5 or 6 homecooked mini meals a day, that would be one thing. But they're not, are they?

MessOfEyelinerAndSpraypaint, 3 meals a day is more a marker of the captalist system as eating can be timetabled into the working day. If you're eating you can't be working and making money or making money for someone else.

I've always thought it better to eat a smaller amount when hungry rather than waiting for arbitrary meal times to eat loads. Hunger is a sign your body needs food. Why wait?

We actually had snacks provided by school at both breaks 35 years ago.

I was at boarding school and we had breakfast, morning break, lunch, afternoon break, tea and supper (supper was bizarrely a choice of Nescafé or sachets of instant hot chocolate with chocolate digestive or custard cream biscuits, for 11- 26 year olds not long before bed which is a bit mad...)

@MessOfEyelinerAndSpraypaint

A modern malaise, wrought by incremental conditioning - short attention spans, instant gratification - underpinned by now- well - established fake choice. Constant grazing, the sound of humans imitating cows chewing cud has made cinema going exceedingly irritating. As a 70s child, I have watched as we gawped at America's obese population, bloated by aisles of ersatz food: & as the same fat appeared over here, encouraged by the celebratory embracing of the worst fast food. Vegetarians & vegans back in the 80s (when I, at 13, finally refused to 'eat up, there's starving kids in Africa') we, conversely, had little choice-mocked as cranks (hence the restaurant of same name!) and consigned to 'health food shops' as if our resistance of McDonald's, our revulsion at a 'cheeky' (ffs) Nandos, made us revolting killjoys at the Thatcherite party. Snacks are part of the capitalist system's need to find ever-new things to sell us, or new ways of selling us old stuff. If people stopped for a minute, to listen to their appetite, to question what 'choice' really is, and to teach their children delayed gratification, exercise, & to identify wants as separate to needs... we may reverse this spiral into ever-accelerating, ugly, literal, constant consumption. And silence the chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

Parklife!

I feel attacked

For most of the time I was at primary school (72 to 78) snacks of any kind, even fruit, were forbidden because they caused litter.

I think fizzy drinks were much less common in the seventies. I suppose adults hadn’t grown up with them, didn’t drink them and regarded them as an occasional unsophisticated treat for children. We might have them in a cafe but almost never had them in the house. I suppose they were gradually making inroads, though.
Obviously, there are multiple reasons for the obesity crisis, but I do feel frequent snacking including fizzy drinks is one. Michael Mosley is always very down on snacking.

Thank you to everyone who realised that I do not think snacking is the sole cause of obesity— of course it isn’t! But I think this pattern of eating definitely contributes, especially when the food is specifically the type marketed as ‘snack’ food which is almost always unhealthy

I agree, even when I look at 'healthy eating' plans, they include 2 healthy snacks a day... I don't need a snack everyday, to me snacks are a treat that I might have on a Saturday or something. I have recently started limiting my calorie intake (not super drastically) and increasing my water intake and I feel soooo much more energised and no where near as lethargic and bloated. People eat too much, including me until now, it's just so easy to get ready to eat food nowadays. Also, pretty sure the structure of how we eat, I.e breakfast, lunch, dinner, is just something we westerners made up, we don't have to eat this way, for example, I don't eat anything until around 1pm each day.

OP you have made me go for a snack now

@Kakser I have autoimmune thyroid disease so struggle to lose weight but I'm just not hungry enough ever to eat 3 x a day regardless . And I'm active and busy . I also don't eat meat or drink so don't consume extra calories. Also super short which shows every pound 🙄.. thanks for the advice though 🤷‍♀️

3 meals a day is more a marker of the captalist system as eating can be timetabled into the working day. If you're eating you can't be working and making money or making money for someone else.

But who wants to be cooking or preparing food 6 times a day? Who has time? It's all very well blaming capitalists, but unless you're advocating a return to a hunter gatherer lifestyle, I'm not sure what the alternative is.

@gunnersgold

Omg this! I'm slightly overweight and only ever eat 2 x a day ! Sometimes once .. we don't need so much food !

What point are you trying to make?

Yanbu

But who wants to be cooking or preparing food 6 times a day? Who has time?

I just grabbed an apple from the kitchen for my afternoon snack. Yes took about a minute in total. Not sure why the assumption is that all these snacks are actually meals that take prep time.

I think you’re correct. DS gets breakfast, lunch at 11.30, fruit when he wakes from his nap and then his tea. He’s fine! We’re obsessed with snacks. Even at nursery he gets a main and dessert for lunch and tea, two lots of snacks and cereal and toast for breakfast! Madness!!

@Milkbottlelegs that people don't need as much food as they eat IMO .. it's a forum for opinions . When I say slightly overweight , I'm a size 8 but very short .

I came across this the other day -
news.sky.com/story/overeating-not-the-primary-cause-of-obesity-claim-scientists-12406990

A new paper explaining the causes has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, claiming there are fundamental flaws in the energy balance model, and tying obesity to the consumption of low-quality food and processed carbohydrates.

The snack at morning break is fruit though, especially in Primary. That can’t be causing obesity

I worked in a cloth factory for a long time.

On the shop floor and in the offices.
Based purely on anecdotal evidence of my own observations and chats with the people I worked with, 60 factory workers, 40 office workers.

On the shop floor people would start at around 8, have a cuppa about 20 then eat their lunch at 1, which would be a sandwich, chocolate bar and bag of crisps, then a cuppa at 3 and home at 5 for their tea at 6 that would be a cooked meal. This is what I'd say was normal, how we grew up etc.

I moved into the office and well, it was very different.
People would start at 9 with a tea and biscuit. 11am have tea and carrot sticks. At 1 they'd head out for lunch at a pub or a £3 meal deal with sandwich, snack and cake or someone would do a Gregg's run. At 2 have an after dinner getting back to work cuppa. At 3 have a cuppa and a bag of crisps. At 4ish have tea and whatever was left like grapes or biscuit or crisps or carrot sticks. At 5.30 head home and have McDonald's on the way or they'd be planning an Indian takeaway or a dominos etc. Very few office workers I worked with ever planned meals or bought ingredients, which I found odd. I mentioned it once to someone and they said Little and Often is better, but they seemed to just constantly graze on stuff.

So what that has to do with anything is anyone's guess... But it's just a difference I spotted.

I just grabbed an apple from the kitchen for my afternoon snack. Yes took about a minute in total. Not sure why the assumption is that all these snacks are actually meals that take prep time.

I'm not actually assuming that, but I expect it would be nutritionally better if they were. I'm actually assuming that for the vast majority of people it's a couple of chocolate biscuits, a packet of crisps or a doughnut. Hence the suggestion that eating plenty of nutritious food at meal times and not snacking is better. Most people don't carry a load of vegetables, fish, meat, eggs etc around to snack on. Obviously an apple, as afternoon snacks go, is ok. It still raises your blood sugar though, especially eaten not as part of a meal.

I agree, certainly for adults. If it’s one thing I’ve learnt during the time I’ve been losing weight, it’s that I don’t need to be constantly eating and grossly overestimated portion size. In fact, the more frequently I snack, the more I want to eat and quite often I’m simply thirsty and not hungry at all.

Of course my calorie needs are nowhere near that of a growing child, but I do think the idea of constantly having to have food at hand is not a good message to be giving.

@RedMarauder I'm not at all surprised by that. It ties in with theories doing the rounds in various books atm. It's partly why calorie-controlled diets don't work in the long-run for the vast majority of people, I suppose. It's not that they're eating too much, it's that they're eating the wrong things.

My kids are snackers and eat 3 balanced meals a day. No weight issues at all. Youngest needs to put some bulk on if anything but is always on the go.

Me on the other hand, I've reduced to 2 meals a day, sometimes just one at a weekend if it's a big old feast and still have too much tummy fat for my height. Annoying.