The snack requests are going to kill me off.

[3AndStopping]

One week into the summer holidays and if I hear ‘I’m hungry.’ One more time I might actually bang my head against a brick wall!! Helppppp!
(light hearted(ish) of course.)

@cinnamonfrenchtoast my hubby says this to my kids all the time 🤣

That’s genius! Breakfast cereal in one, blueberries in another, popcorn in another and dried fruit in the last one. All snack options covered!

Dc here are given a weekly snack box. They can save stuff or scarf the lot in one sitting but it won't be replaced until the next weekly shop. They're pretty good at regulating but are much older than yours!

My mum and dad were hard-nosed about snacks.

1. If obviously not really hungry just bored, "there's fruit in the fruit bowl" (whether there was or not)
2. If probably peckish e.g. after school or while playing lots of active games outside - a piece of toast with usually something savoury - cheese or tuna or marmite
3. If basically starving e.g. post swimming it'd be a combination of the two - toast + fruit.

A biscuit or two maybe once a day when they were having one with a cuppa.

They couldn't afford to get individually wrapped snacks for us and didn't keep many snacks in the house. I don't think either would recognise a babybel or a pepperami if it slapped them in the face. It was fine.

DD is 9 now so just sorts out snacks herself though I do keep an eye to make sure she's not literally eating non-stop.

When she was 5 she needed to work on her maths a bit so we set up a snack shop on the kitchen table, gave her a load of fake coins and priced everything up. It was a massive hit, she would go to the table, put her money in the till (plastic cup with till written on it) and sort out her change, then very proudly walk off with her snack, it was like a wonderful accidental win, she improved her maths and I didnt have to sort snacks 300 times a day.

Box each, place what you would consider a weeks worth of snacks in it.
They're theirs to eat when they wish but when they're gone they're gone. We started it when my youngest was 2, others were 6 & 8. All 3 ate all snacks within a day or 2 the first week. Any requests for snacks got the response "help yourself from your box". The 2nd week they managed to make them last most of the week, and before long even had stuff left at the end of the week.
We did it every school holiday till they were old enough to not need rationing. They loved getting their boxes on Saturday afternoons.

You think obesity is a modern day problem? What about the huge rise in obesity over the last few decades, from the generations that now swear the ‘never had snacks as kids, just three square meals a day’? These generations were raised by the previous one, who lost a lot of sense of normal meals due to rationing food.

Im not saying give in to every snacking whim, but Boomers/Gen x/Millennials really weren’t raised with ideal food standards either. A lot of rose tinted glasses being worn without factoring in how obesity and the health issues that come with it has been on a steep rise in adults for a long time now.

DD puts out 3 small snacks into a lunchbox, labelled for each DC. There is also a full fruit bowl, and they have massive water bottles filled each morning. And she keeps mealtimes the same as school terms - so early-ish breakfast, lunch at 12 and tea at 5pm. She found that moving meals to later increased the hungry whining.

Her rule is once those snacks have gone, there won't be any more and if you ask for more, it means you get one less tomorrow for each time you ask.

My ASD child turned himself orange with easy peelers.... I never left all.the family fruit out in the bowl after that 🤣... it was entirely sensory seeking and no interoception to.tell him he was full !

I don't have children but if I did I'd probably just provide a fruit bowl and point them in that direction, a piece of cheese or jam on toast.

Ah, my people. Mine are hungry all the time. The fruit bowl is decimated daily. I can't keep up!

I feel like my 4yr old does better off a 4 small meal a day strategy than 3 larger ones. It's just how her metabolism seems to be at the moment. I'm not thinking of it as snacks per se. More just spreading the calories out through the day evenly. Going with it for now as it seems to suit her and it keeps her steady. E.g. today she ate:
Breakfast: a boiled egg and half a sausage. Half a piece of buttered toast.
Second meal: A banana. A breaded chicken breast and rice.
Third meal: A handful of walnuts, some dates and cashew nuts. Couple of carrot sticks.
Fourth meal: lamb, couple of roast potatoes. Strawberry and banana with yoghurt.

Little and often seems to be the way to go for her. I don't venture into the snack-foods aisle I just try and give her filling mini meals.

Wait until you have a 19 year old home from Uni and trying to bulk up!!

Its endless cupboard, fridge and freezer door opening looking for snacks, the smoothie maker is going and constant cooking snacks on his days off which is basically a full meal and he will always disappear after eating saying he will do his washing up …later!! We are spending a fortune!!

It's natural to graze all day, there isn't an animal on the earth that has 3 set meals a day.
Medical studies have shown that those that eat 3 set meals a day are more likely to eat more to keep them going to the next time, and gain weight, than those that snack according to appetite

Parents who have an unhealthy mindset about food, believe snacking is the root of all evil and that going hours in between meals is absolutely normal.

Going hours between meals is normal IMO. One snack per day, especially for children? Also normal. Constant snacking is not. And if the constant snacks are things like crisps, chocolate, sweets, sugary yoghurts, etc. it's extremely unhealthy.

I'm not British, but when I was growing up we generally had three meals a day plus something mid-afternoon when we came home from school. My parents struck a good balance, I think. We weren't deprived of biscuits or chocolate or crisps but we didn't have those things every day (or even every week or every month).

As an adult and with my own family, I've followed this same basic plan. I don't usually have any snacks myself these days because I don't feel the need. Though if I want something in the afternoon I won't deprive myself. My username notwithstanding, biscuits and the like are not a daily thing for us. 😀

Box of veg sticks always available in the fridge. Likewise fruit bowl. Slice of cake or a couple of biscuits at 4pm. That was all the 'snacks' my two got in the holidays. If they eat properly at meal times, they don't need constant snacks. They don't snack at school, after all.

It really isn't.

Some people are naturally grazers, at the end of the day as long as you're still within your BMR calculated calories a day whether you graze throughout the day or whether you have meals it's fine (I know there are studies etc about intracicies within this but just as an overall). The issue is when people have 3 meals a day and also snack a lot- that all adds up.

Summer holidays start tomorrow for me and I've already told the children don't ask for anything they will have a snack box each 3healthy meals and fruit they can have one of each of throughout the day,lots of outdoor activities for us these next 6weeks no matter what the weather.

@Angrywife I'd agree with you if you and your children were living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Where you had to be aware of food availability and ready to be eating what you could find all the time, in case your food supply disappeared tomorrow. That is indeed how we evolved. I remember a great friend of mine - a childhood behaviour expert - telling me, as we watched her toddler son delighting in picking some blackberries - that the 'finger-grip-to-mouth' gesture is one of the earliest to develop, once children are mobile. Fascinating stuff.

But the problem is that following such a 'grazing' lifestyle in today's circumstances is an almost certain recipe for over-eating. Because we don't live in a 'natural' environment. In western cities, lifestyles could hardly be less natural. There are so many pressures on youngsters to consume.

I've said my bit already about early-mid 20th cent patterns of childhood eating. I can't force that on anyone, but science says that in western societies it's resulted in the longest-lived generations ever -though of course antibiotics have also played a big part in that, But it's a trend that might now - because of fast food/lack of exercising etc - be being stalled or maybe even reversing. Snacking in a controlled toddler is one thing. Snacking a a child that does not have parental control - very difficult to achive, in so many circumstances today - is altogether something different.

I tried the snack boxes at the beginning of the holidays and I got big 2L boxes, added fruit, veg sticks, healthier crisps, cheese, yoghurt, oatcakes, cheese spread for the oat cakes, jelly, sandwiches, homemade chocolate seed cake things. The boxes were full. On the first day my two oldest had eaten the whole of their boxes before I woke up at 8am. By day two I found wrappers and fruit cores under the couch from the boxes. Day 3 I gave up.

🤣🤣🤣

h ha ha, they come back from Uni you know…add an extra possible 10 to that

My 7 year old ate the contents of the snack box in one sitting, then an hour later asked for more snacks! Fml

Take them to a large shopping mall, then run away.