To only buy crisps and biscuits occasionally?

[JudithOnHolidayAgain]

I have two hungry teens at home and there is always fruit and a range of snacks available.
Dd is a sprinter, she has a healthy diet and rarely eats crisps or biscuits. Ds has autism and learning difficulties, he would eat a multipack of crisps in one sitting if he could but if there aren't any he eats fruit.....we go through a lot of apples and bananas!!!
If you have teens / kids do you always buy crisps and biscuits. I've heard people talk about a snack drawer or cupboard but it's never been something I've done.

There are some amazing self controlled families on this thread. When I was young it was no eating between meals, but we had a dessert with every evening meal. This could be half a banana, half a grapefruit, a very small pice of fruit pie, rice pudding etc. I now have a very sweet tooth and even though my kids are grown I still only buy thing I don't like! So I am not tempted. I do buy treats for my DGD7 and her mum tells me off🙄 quite rightly.

I'm perfectly happy....but I was reading another thread where posters were telling the op she should buy crisps for her moaning teen.
It got me thinking.

Thinking about what?

About the posters who advocated keeping crisps etc available all the time and wondering if my approach was standard or unusual

It's fine to only have crisps as a treat but you should be very careful about how much fruit they are eating. Many fruits are riddled with sugar. Ideally you should limit them to one or two servings of fruit and force them to have vegetable snacks the rest of the time like carrot batons or celery. Some people say cucumber is OK but I can't stand the taste.

Uh huh. Well, you crack on.

anyone else on here smell that ……

I grew up in a house that always had lots of sweet treats -my mother has an incredible sweet tooth. My siblings & i were never v fussed because the chocolate / biscuits/ cake was always there, on tap. We totally had take it or leave it attitudes

I had school friends whose parents really restricted 'treats ' & they went crazy for them when they got a chance.

We always, always have treats. Lots of them of many types. I know we currently have: bars of Cadbury's chocolate, daim bars, yellow snack packs, jaffa cakes, Leibniz biscuits, cantucci, custard creams, bourbons, chocolate Easter bunny, mini eggs, popcorn, salted peanuts, pistachios, chili coated nuts , popcorn, salt & vinegar crisps, Sesame sticks...
That's just off the top of my head & I'm sure there's more!

I did a clear out over the weekend & threw away a load of sweet treats that were out of date!!!

Dc eat some, but often rummage through all that & then say 'nah..nothing i want there'

We eat v well, home cooked dinners every day. I'm glad the dc have control over their snacking

I usually have crisps and biscuits in the house, they’re certainly not a Christmas only treat. You can set the rules in your own house though, if you don’t want to buy them you don’t need anyone’s permission.

What?! Your gd isn't allowed treats? Dm always buys my dcs treats; it's the right of passage for a grandparent surely. She has started giving them pocket money instead lately (to buy sweets at the shop). 😂 It's working well, because I'm trying to teach them the value of money; sometimes they'll save it, etc.

Everything is fine in moderation imo. I grew up in a household where snacks were always available, but we asked if we could have them first, Eg., Can I have a packet of crisps please?" DM: "No, your dinner is almost ready." My dcs do the same, they don't just go get it without asking first, incase a meal is almost ready etc.

We didn't do desserts after dinner unless it was a special occasion. When I met dh, his family did this, and I didn't think it was a thing for your average every day, so this felt strange for me. 😂
I'm sorry to say my dcs have desserts (ha hem thanks dh). To be fair they do well with their healthy meal before it, and enjoy savoury too. They also are pretty good self regulators. I think as a pp said, when you make something forbidden it can cause issues later.

Nobody should eat rubbish, ever. Crisps, biscuits, pizza, chips, McDonalds, KFC, pizza, fish fingers: they are all sludge.

I buy a 6 pack if needed, I bought one two weeks ago but when I wrote the shopping list Saturday there were still 4 packets so I didn't bother getting more, there's been a packet of biscuits in the cupboard for weeks but I think DH hasn't spotted them. DS is pretty good and will ask before having a snack, we bake banana bread most weeks (a no sugar recipe), and there's plenty of other things, crackers, cheese, veg, fruit etc. PIL kitchen is similar always d
Something nice knocking around but people pay little interest, snack food was a treat when I grew up and I have to exert a lot more self control than DH and DS who take or leave it

Yes, we always have snacks like crisps/chocolate in the house but I’ve always been very much an everything in moderation parent which is certainly reflected in my DD and her eating habits. She’s 21 now but even as a young child never went overboard on junk (despite free access to it!) and much prefers ‘real’ food. Never met a child that preferred vegetables to cakes/biscuits before her🤣

If you turn unhealthy foods into a forbidden fruit then you’re just asking for issues as they get older. So many of DD’s friends used to get excited about their new found freedom and spent their afternoons post school gorging on multipacks of sweet/chocolate from the corner shop

We always have them in the house - we have some rules in place around them (mainly to stop the DC having 2 bites of dinner, being ‘full’ and then eating 30 snacks) but broadly people self regulate. I do buy multipacks of individual portions though tbf (rather than sharing sized) as the psychological barrier of ‘opening another’ is effective for me and DH.

What helps me is also stocking up on things I have instead like Propercorn popcorn, sugar free jelly, almonds and mini Twisters.

My DM took a similar approach and i think that’s a big factor in why I can take or leave most junk food.

Half a banana, bloody hell how miserable for you.

We always have crisps, sweets, biscuits, fruit and yogurts. I don't know anyone in real life who doesn't have these things readily available but if course it's not the norm on here.

Half a banana, bloody hell how miserable for you.

Almost as bad as someone else who allows 5 haribo, I’ve never counted haribo in my life.

Everyone in my family has zero self control so we do limit what we buy in. I love the idea of always having stuff around so children don't crave it but those children are not my children! And I can't do it either. Even a jar of jam is eaten in a couple of days. We aren't mega strict and usually have a sweet treat (often home made and healthier than average) every day although at the moment that is replaced with working our way through all the Easter chocolate!

On a thread recently, somebody mentioned her friend halfing smarties! Wtaf 😂

Definitely not the norm on MN. God forbid you so much as look at a UPF. And someone up thread vilifying fruit for having too much sugar FFS!

We never have crisps and biscuits in the cupboards as standard- only as a special treat. We are all dopamine-seekers in this family and have a tendency towards comfort eating, so buying crisps and biscuits every week would be disastrous. When my kids were younger teens, after school snacks were fruit, cereal or toast. I sometimes bought cereal bars (these are as bad as biscuits I’m sure, but they were less interesting/tempting so none of us were tempted to binge on them). I would also bake every few weeks- often flapjack- and that never hung around for long!

Always crisps, chocolate and biscuits in this house, always has been. My kids can take or leave it to be honest, more oft than not they will opt for a sandwich. I guess they were always so used to it being there that it was not considered a treat. When my brother's kids come over however they absolutely gorge themselves because they don't have any in their house at all.

YANBU, OP.

DS12 is pretty active and DD13 very active. They eat everything. We do not snack apart from their after school snack which is bread or brioche with jam or « Nutella » or homemade chocolate cake or cookies. We have desserts available every meal which are bananas, other fruits, yogurts, and homemade things like cakes or chocolate mousse or fruit compote and occasionally a dessert from the pâtissierie like éclairs. They choose whatever they want for dessert. When the desserts run out, they run out! They also get a (small) dessert with their school lunch.

Don’t buy / open crisps unless guests are coming over for apéritif (once every couple of months on average.)

Neither of them can eat sweets (Haribo type) because of braces.

I have some nieces and nephews. One niece isn’t allowed sweets or anything with sugar in very often and then only the tiniest of amounts (even though her parents sit and scoff that sort of food in front of her). She also eats a relatively limited beige food diet (no sensory issues). She seeks out sweets, biscuits and cakes whenever she’s with us or grandparents. She also sneaks it when her parents aren’t looking.

On the other side, I have a niece and nephew who are allowed crisps and sweets etc. They take them or leave them. Their parents often do them a grazing plate for lunch which will have fruit, veg, fish, potatoes, crisps and maybe a cake or sweets. They naturally eat a good variety of all of it and never just go for the cakes or crisps. They also eat curries, sushi, Pad Thai, pasta dishes and lots more, despite having allergies and coeliac disease. Yet it’s the parents of the first niece who think their daughter is ‘healthy eating’.

On a thread recently, somebody mentioned her friend halfing smarties! Wtaf😂

Where would you even begin halving a smartie, I’d rather not give them at all that try to cut one in half. This place is crazy with food issues.