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??

If you can afford to feed your family, hell even if you supplement from a food bank, you can afford to let people serve themselves their own portions. People are going eat what they need, no more.

Controlling food actually leads to disordered eating- sneaking food to your room, midnight snacks, eating more than you should, or even eating less than you should if the control is enforced with shame ie. “you’re a greedy pig aren’t you?”

People are going eat what they need, no more. - you think this is the case in our society?

Sigh at everyone picking on op quickly summarising what she serves up in a half sentence. It's a quick description not an essay! She might well give 3 to herself, 3 for Fred, 2 for Johnny and 4 for hubby but who goes into that much blooming depth in the middle of a big post.

It's clearly not a list of what she actually serves unless you're a persnickety judgy pants.

It is in homes where food isn’t a battlefield of control, guilt and shaming.

Completely disagree, but there you go.

I would think letting people eat as much as they want leads to disordered eating in kids rather than teaching them what is a normal portion of carbs, protein and veg.

And not everyone has a big dining table for dishes and dishes of food

No, the OP stated
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.

The OP is planning for each person to have 3 sausages and 2 bits bacon and is upset that her DH has “nicked” two bits of bacon thus meaning the portions she has allotted are thrown off.

It is clearly what she thinks each person should have. That is why she views the DH having two bits of bacon early as stealing food.

maybe they are all the same size, or maybe experience tells her that’s how much everyone eats on average?

but anyway, how do you make sure everyone has enough for their appetite as per your post? Do you cook unlimited sausages and bacon? Or do you work within the laws of physics (and budgets) and set a limit of some kind?

So what should she do? Cook infinite amounts of food? this wouldn't be the only stuff on the plate. And as she said - there is other food available.

Of course you can't. If I cook 8 sausages, my son will eat 8 eat sausages if he gets to serve himself first. If I cook 10, he'll cook 10. If I cook 20, my son will eat 10 and so will my daughter. To let us all have free reign, I'd need 20 for my children and 6 for my OH and I to share.

People do not develop eating disorders because they are served 3 sausages along with some potatoes and veg.

No-one should be using a food bank in order to feed their children 10 sausages a meal rather than the children eating 3 plus potatoes.

The OP did not call her OH a greedy pig. She doesn't want him eating more than allocated (seemingly quite reasonable) portion of the food she's allocated. She's been very clear that there is bread and snacks which he is very welcome to help himself to at any point.

I think the OP OH is the one doing the controlling and guilt not OP!

I would not expect a grown man to survive on the same rations as a child, so I would be cooking extra for him in the first place, but then I'd also expect him to know that even if he works to pay for the food, there's also labour involved in cooking it, so the end product isn't just his.

I love people throwing about what causes eating disorders while showing they have zero idea about how they come about. Normal sharing of food amongst a household is not it.

We have steak for DH and I for tomorrow and off the back of this thread I'm going to eat both and just serve the veg and potatoes. And call DH controlling for trying to regulate my eating if when he gets cross about not getting any 😂.

I actually disagree with this, but equally I don’t think what the OP is doing is necessarily going to lead to eating disorders. If the children have to hide food because their father will eat it all otherwise, that’s more worrying.

But if you're female you need to serve him his and half of yours. Don't you know he needs to eat far far more calories than you?

If you read the studies teaching children to eat intuitively, as in listen to their hunger signals and then be able to match that to actual portions of food then it doesn’t lead to over-eating. We do teach balancing your meal so they aren’t only putting rice on their plate and nothing else. When they were little we would say 1/3rd of your plate should be something green that grew…and so on. Now it’s second nature.

There is also no such thing as a “normal” portion of carbs, protein and veg. If you look at the nutritional guides each persons portion size is based on the size of different parts of their hand (and this is a very rough rule of thumb in and of itself). So teaching children that a “normal” portion is x spoons of, or this size of that visually- it’s not correct, because the right portion size changes as you grow, changes depending on how sporty or sedentary you are and then it also shrinks as you age as your metabolism slows down. Thinking that there is a set normal portion size of anything is a mistake if you want to stay a healthy size.

We don’t have a dining room much less a dining table! 🤣
We serve ourselves from the pots and pans on the hob.

Well, of course your children will over eat if given the opportunity because they’ve been raised in a food controlled environment rather than an intuitive eating environment. Which is exactly what I posted is the result of food control.

😂

How do you decide how much to cook? What do you do if someone takes so much that someone else doesn’t have as much as they want? I don’t know why people who are objecting to the idea of generally making an estimate of how things will be shared out at a meal can’t answer these things. You must be setting a limit of some sort otherwise you are cooking unlimited amounts of food.

I agree with what you say about letting them eat intuitively. I don’t actually teach my children anything about portion sizes or proportions of things on their plate. I model eating to my own appetite (which includes lots of veg etc), and say nothing about what they choose.

I'd like to see any research backing up your view. Esp in a world of ultra processed food and the expense and time of eating entirely non-ultra processed.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, it's the reality of the lives we lead, so do you suggest I, and all the other 'controlling' people who don't provide whatever our families want to eat, no holds barred, just stop paying our rent so out children can have 17 portions of salmon every meal if they want they want?

I think you're an extremist with completely ridiculous views but each to their own.

This is not an answer. How many sausages should this person have cooked all those years ago before she caused her children to “overeat”?

according to your logic though, 10 sausages could just be someone’s appetite and it would be wrong to restrict that?

Now if the OP had said she was doing that, and having two herself, there would have been dozens of posters accusing her of serving penis portions and proclaiming that they could eat just as many sausages as any man.

OP also said she had teens, my teens eat the same as me.

"When they were little we would say 1/3rd of your plate should be something green that grew…and so on."

But that's exactly what you're saying people shouldn't do - hilarious!!!