eating food without permission

[thecatswhiskrs]

This is a long-running argument in our house and I'd love to get a sense from others of whether I (and my kids) are just being unreasonable....

DH has a habit of mooching around the kitchen looking for food. He feels that anything in the kitchen is (and should be) fair game. He gets very upset when we shout at him for eating something that we feel he shouldn't have or something that we feel he should have checked first.

Examples:

• A child will have cooked some cookies for themselves and others to eat. The leave the tray on the counter to cool anticipating that lovely treat later and then come back to find their father has eaten a third of the tray before they've even offered.
• A child will have made some food for their lunch. There will be leftovers and they will have mentally allocated these for their lunch the next day in school. They leave it in the fridge or somewhere to cool, come back and it's gone.
• I am making dinner. It's nearly time to eat. I've planned the meal so that everyone has (for instance) 3 sausages and two bits of bacon. He comes in and nicks two bits of bacon from the pan right before we are about to eat.

He argues that he has paid for the all of the food in the kitchen and shouldn't have to ask for permission to eat it. If we have plans for some of it and haven't allowed enough to share then it's our fault for not making enough (we should just make lots more of everything to allow for others having some). He feels that we are not being generous and that (in spite of his best efforts to model generosity) we are all just being mean.

Are we being unreasonable (or just plain miserable!) to want him to at least check whose food it is and whether it has a destination before just eating it??

Because it's a finite resource. If one person eats whatever they want then there is less for other people.

Which means that if someone has baked cookies, or prepared a meal, based on X number of people sharing them, one person having a disproportionate amount (without quickly saying 'is it alright if I grab a couple of these now?' or similar) means everyone else has less.

There's only so much food in, so if the rule is that everyone eats whatever they want with no thought to anyone else, it becomes first come first served. And due to the way most modern families are set up (in and out at different times etc) that isn't fair either.

It's just nice to think about whether you taking extra means someone else is missing out I suppose 🤷🏻‍♀️

Another thing you could do is for him to buy a load of snacks just for him and stick them in a tin where he can eat them any time then he won’t be hungry. He can refill as needed.

Depends on you having the money to do that but I guess if it saves arguments it could be worth it

I'd suggest a plate of cookies laced with laxative. Do they still make laxative chocolate???

If your DC had made cookies, you would just help yourself to them if you wanted to?

You wouldn’t bother to check - for example they might have made them for a friend’s birthday?

It doesn’t take much to make considerate choices, there is no need to help yourself to food indiscriminately without any thought of anyone else.

if you and your family are all happy with this then it’s fine, but OP and their DC are not and over 90% wouldn’t be, according to the poll.

Definitely agree

I don’t give my husband or anyone else permission to eat food. Unless something is obviously packaged up as someone’s lunch or it’s clearly the only thing left for the evening meal then they eat what they want. I presume the children in the OP’s post are not young, as they are baking and making their own lunches so just make enough for everyone or package them up.

Basic manners and thoughtfulness.. he clearly doesnt have any.
If he picks and eats as youre about to put it out for dinner, deduct it from his portion.

Ask him to have an honest no shouty chat with all of you, about how everyone in the house plans the usage of the food, yes hes paying for it, but thats not the only consideration, not by a long shot

He argues that he has paid for the all of the food in the kitchen and shouldn't have to ask for permission to eat it

This is the heart of the issue, ew.

Same in our house. I don’t even expect my adult children to ask when they are visiting.

I grew up in a home where my mother was very controlling over food she blamed it on war rationing even though she was a baby in the war . She would hide treats we would have to ask to eat anything and invariably have the answer “no that’s for sat /sun etc” or if you asked to eat an apple you were told to have an orange . good would often go off because we hand by been allowed to eat it . Consequently it’s a free for all in my house I hate people asking to eat something if it gets eaten it gets replaced or we do without . Maybe something like that going on with your DP

There's surely a difference between grabbing some food out of the fridge/cupboard or whatever if you're hungry and eating cookies your child has made whilst they're cooling and stuff you know is for everyone's dinner. No one in our house has to ask for food either, but they aren't selfish fuckers who would just take stuff they know someone else is saving.

This.

That's...not really addressing what i put at all. I'm not sure if you just didn't understand or didn't read it. I literally started by stating that someone shouldn't go without because someone else wants to eat more 🤷‍♀️ I've said i think a natural consequence would be for them to have less in the circumstance listed. I can't address who should shop...as I've pointed out...as its not clear what the dynamic is and who is working when.

If someone in the house - child or adult or whatever - wants a bigger portion of normal food then provided there isn't a significant health or obesity issue in play i really can't see why that shouldn't be accommodated. We shouldn't demonise food and I don't think it's positive to police what a grown adult, who financially contributes to the shopping but may not necessarily be able to go out and do it, wants to eat or doesn't. Open communication is key here, in my house if my partner wants to take our meal leftovers for lunch the next day then he would specifically seek me out and ask. If he hasn't asked and it's in the fridge then it's just leftovers and both of us would be fine for it to go to whoever wants it. I certainly wouldn't be upset if he ate it when I hadn't even said I wanted it! That seems really controlling to me. And I'm not even going to go there on your baking statistics. If I baked 12 muffins my child wouldn't expect a third share and my partner wouldn't be like...oh 4 are mine either. But that's how households are different and it's why the decision on who is in the wrong is a really tricky one in this case

Food isn't being demonised here.

My DH was the scapegoat for everything that went wrong in his family. He worked all through uni and often did double shifts (16 hours) in holidays. No financial help from his family. He often came home to find notes on everything saying not to eat it. The food had been reserved for others. So out of the house from 5.30 a m and no food. In the end he took to buying fish and chips for example on his way home, and that caused issues as they didn't want to smell that at 10.30pm! It wasn't about food, it was because he was the scapegoat.
I didn't do what his parents did. People who are in my home eat.
And, as I said, I think this isn't about food, but probably a dislike for one person.

He sounds greedy. It’s very obvious in our household what are for the kids and us; if for example theres a family bag of malteasers he would presume ive bought these for us all for a family night, if it was a single bag he would think its for the kids. My husband knows my ways even from what part of the cupboard they are in, sounds like your husband knows but doesnt care.

Meanwhile that isn't remotely like this situation. OPs DH is a grown man who I'm sure could buy some biscuits for example to pop in the cupboard instead of eating his child's cookies before they'd even cooled.

I think fair game unless stated (told your husband that DC is saving their leftovers for their lunch). But can’t justify the ‘taking food from the pan just before it’s plated’ action - that deserves a slap on the hand!

I just hide everything. Doesn’t anyone else do that? Sometimes i find packets of biscuits in very random places. In our house it’s the kids that eat everything! Like a swarm of ravenous locusts. Hiding places do have to get more and more imaginative though, I found some m and ms in a sock drawer recently. Happy days . 😂

Yes he's a twat. But at least you know that and are planning to divorce him!

As I said, I don't believe this is about food. There is something else going on. Why not just announce that the cookies, biscuits , cake have been cooked for a reason. It's like they are in a house share and no one talks!

If he took the bits of his own dinner that means he just gets less dished up on his plate.

The other things it’s unclear if he knows if it’s earmarked, if he does that very bad.

He sounds horribly entitled.

I bet if he eats the main ingredient bought to cook a meal, he wouldn’t be the one spending half an hour going to the supermarket to pick a new portion of that ingredient up.

I buy all the food in our house - my partner is Sahd. But he contributes value by doing chores and childcare, therefore the food in fridge is equally his. If he has for example
set aside two salmon steaks for dinner and I ate one, I’m pretty sure the result would be I have no salmon with my veg and rice at dinner time!

How does that work if he just wanders in and stuffs his face? I don’t stand in the kitchen waiting for baking to cool - I go off and do other stuff.

Considerate family members think about others. We had a cake in the house. There’s usually enough for two slices each. When I went to get my second slice, I couldn’t tell if DH had had his second slice yet (what was left was slightly bigger than one slice, but not quite two) and he wasn’t around to ask. So I took half a slice. Because I care and wanted to make sure he got his fair share, even if I had a slightly smaller slice. He would do the same for me and I don’t understand people who just eat whatever they like without thinking of others.