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.

We had a deep pan drawer as a snack drawer and a drawer in the fridge for chocolate. My boys were all healthy weights/sizes and to be honest they self regulated.As adults Non have a sweet tooth and rarely eat crisps. I cooked everything else from scratch that they ate (including bread, biscuits, cake etc) and they ate very well. Good hearty meals filled them up. I grew up poor and hungry. Everything was made available to my children, I never wanted them to be deprived of anything.

When mine were teens, I didn't buy crisps and biscuits all the time. They would snack on wraps or bagels with cheese, cold meats and salad, fruit or Greek yoghurt and honey. Nothing wrong with occasionally having crisps or biscuits, just not every day.

No, I grew up in a country where we did not have the idea of snacking or indeed crisps in a shop, and I'm fine. Honestly, the British diet is horrendous - this must be the first country I lived in where people eat a pack of crisps for lunch! I have 2 kids and don't buy this at all. They eat bananas, apples and grapes.

Just crisps and fruit, I’ve given up buying chocolate, cereal bars or biscuits as they get eaten in two days.

Don't overdo if with the natural sugar now, hopefully some other food groups are involved there. I won't judge though, just as I don't tend to make sweeping generalisations about countries either.

DS isn't able to self regulate with crisps and biscuits so I have to ration them! When I do buy crisps they are kept in the boot of my car as he can't get at them there. Luckily he now eats an amazing diet.....but it has taken years of effort to get to this point. We are now at the point that I can make one family meal with no adjustments for him ....its life changing!
As a non verbal 4 year old he lived on milk.bananas, dry cheerios, rice cakes. toast and mcdonalds nuggets.

You are not kidding. There were six kids, both parents, we had a small farm, dad was extremely tight with money, mum was not interested in food. We had set days so broth Tuesday, potato pie Saturday, one chicken between 8 Sunday. A treat was a Mars bar cut 6 ways. One typical meal was one piece of bacon , one egg and about 5 chips. We didn't have bread and butter with meals so yep crap really.

Always had a full array of crisps/ buscuits/ treats. Also tried to encourage a healthy balance with food choices. 3 adult sons who can cook, understand nutrition, exercise a lot, and are very slim. Really don’t get this obsessive control of food, pitching good against bad, making food choices so much of a big deal. It’s an unhealthy as the demonised food

I am a big snacker. You'll always get a biscuit or crisp in our house. Plenty of fruit eaten too. All about balance.

We have limited savoury snacks on offer and are also a bake your own biscuits household (with limited success as DD bakes a lot, though at least it’s not UPF). But they also buy their own sweets etc with pocket money (secondary school age) so we have limited control.

I buy crisps but I think Im going to stop the only one ever left are salt and vingaer when I fancy a packet.

I don't think it's obsessive or denying your children if you don't stock rubbish food all the time. You can't deny we have a bad diet issue in this country. And for those posters that talk about 'oh no, we have cupboards full of the stuff, but the kids don't eat it.' Why buy it then? Such a waste.

We don't stock things like biscuits or crisps, but we tend to have a Saturday night treat night, or I may take DD to the shop after kickboxing to pick a treat if she asks.

We don't generally make a big deal of having stuff in or not having stuff in.

My kids eat crisps daily tbh. They are constantly eating, so for them it’s part of a varied diet. Sometimes it’s half a snack-bag of hula hoops between them in their bento box, sometimes if a snack-bag each plus a few extra plain crisps.

They also eat several portions of fruit and veg a day. We do homemade biccies or muffins where I use whole meal flour and generally half the sugar content. So we don’t often have store bought biscuits and never store bought cake.

I don’t think a few crisps are a bad thing if the rest of their diet is okay.

All the studies show that the presence of snacks and lack of rules around food in a house increase consumption of snack food (and therefore fat and sugar) by children.

e.g. Pearson, N., Ball, K., Crawford, D., Predictors of changes in adolescents’ consumption of fruits, vegetables and energy-dense snacks. Br J Nutr 2011; 105: 795 – 803.

Haerens, L., Craeynest, M., Deforche, B., et al. . The contribution of psychosocial and home environmental factors in explaining eating behaviours in adolescents. Eur J Clin Nutr 2008; 62: 51 – 9.

I do buy crisps and biscuits, however there’s also plenty of fruit, veg, yoghurt, cheese, cereal etc to snack on and the DCs are actually very good at balance. They ask for what what they fancy, for example sometimes DD2 (7) will ask for mini cookies, or she’ll ask for a chunk of cucumber, or a pot of strawberries, it just depends. Even my teen will make herself a snack plate of veg sticks and dip. I just try to encourage a healthy choice/moderation.

I grew up in a crisps and biscuits house so I can’t imagine not having treats in the cupboard. However, friends of mine literally have to pop to the shops if they fancy a bit of chocolate. No judgement either way, people just live differently.

I aspire to minimise UPF consumption but I also have no ability to self-regulate. So I don’t keep UPF in the house. Me and the kids do manage to eat plenty of biscuits but the need to make them yourself does slow you down.

We keep a fully stocked food supply. We live 25 min drive each way to the nearest supermarket so there's no 'nipping out to the shop'

We keep treats so there's something there if one of us fancies it. So we have something to offer to visitors and so dc has something to share with friends with they come over (late teens)

We also have a fridge full of cheese, fruit, salad, yoghurt, milk, eggs, bacon (nitrate free), olives, generally homemade soup, all manner of vegetables & herbs etc

A freezer with several portions of home made meals, roast chicken, v good frozen pizza

And cupboards full of all the usual stuff .we have an excellent selection of Asian ingredients, Italian etc many, many spices& herbs, brown soda bread, rices by many types, pasta, noodles, nuts, nut butters, evey condiment you can think k oh of, we have!

It's all about a good balance imo

Haha my adult DS often complains we live in an ‘ingredients house’ 🤣

Always have crisps, biscuits and chocolate in stock, and a variety of them all too. DS 12 very good at regulating himself, far better than me.
Only thing I don't have in, ever, is fizzy drinks.

It's awful that you need to include "nitrate free" for fear of MN judgement. If you're not cooking everything from scratch and buy a packet of biscuits, woe betide you! 😂

Actually we love bacon & I was worried about us eating it fairly frequently. Then l discovered the nitrate free one & we eat it without a second thought now!

I still have noticed that people on MN will carefully choose their adjectives, or include them when unnecessary eg: 'homemade", "from scratch," "very good/high quality," etc. Maybe this is a whole new thread, though. Nobody should have to justify what they eat and feel pressured to make everything from scratch.

I ate half an m&m Easter egg today, and it tasted great. I didn't create it from scratch from a top of the range chocolate moulding kit either. It was bought in Lidl!

I’m British and I grew up with very occasional ‘shop’ snacks only. The only thing I ever had at school break time was a Marmite sandwich - made by me once old enough.
This was back in the Dark Ages though.
Dds’ favourite. which I did buy, was mini Mars Bars.