Do you have "junk" food in your house on a regular basis?

[Ilfurfante]

Just had a debate with my teen DC who argue that we don't have enough variety of food in our house. When asked what they mean, they actually are just referring to what I perceive to be junk food - so crisps, biscuits, chocolate and sugary cereal.

I try to provide a healthy balanced diet but I don't buy these types of foods as routine because actually they just eat them and leave the stuff which is healthy. For instance, they have a choice of porridge, Weetabix or unsweetened muesli for breakfast or they can have eggs, toast, greek yoghurt, fruit etc (in fact the 12 year old made waffles from scratch and had them with blueberries and maple Syrup this morning). If I bought the sugary cereal, they would eat that - they would never choose any of the above options over that so I don't buy it.

I have just made a delicious home cooked lunch (lamb kofta kebabs, bean and tomato salad, homemade focaccia, green salad and tzastiki) which was full of flavour. They all enjoyed it and ate it but they just don't perceive that this as something of value.

We do have what I would consider "treats" but just not as a matter of course (fizzy drinks if it's a special meal, crisps with lunch sometimes, Greggs etc). I don't want them to think these are part of a normal diet on a daily basis. They think I am totally unreasonable.

Am I?

I always have biscuits, crisps, cereal and fizzy juice in. I grew up on a house where there was no money for “treats” and went nuts when I started having my own money (no pocket money had paper rounds). My DD has access to what ever she wants and to be fair she is an amazing eater compared to my step children who grew up in an “almond” home and went crazy when they had access to stuff here.

I have dd 20 and ds 18 at home along with dh.
I buy crisps and biscuits occasionally but it's not something we always have. Ds is autustic and would eat the lot in one go given half a chance! No crisps or biscuits in the cupboards right now but plenty of fruit nuts and seeds and I make proten bars / pancakes etc Dd is big into sport and healthy eating and ds has a great diet.
We are all going on a road trip in Europe soon and will probably eat more "junk"than usual on the trip. Its nice to have a change and we enjoy crisps and biscuits more when we are not having them all the time.

The reason they’d choose the “junk” is because you severely restrict it, call it treats and give it on special occasions like birthdays. If it was treated like any other food, they wouldn’t do this. I always had and still do a cupboard with chocolate and crisps, nuts etc, I don’t refer to it as treats and I do not ration it or provide it on special occasions. As such my now young adult daughter eats a small amount when she fancies and that’s it, it’s never much, because it was never in scarce supply, it was always there, she was taught moderation when little, and modellled it on how we behaved and we didn’t make birthdays an event where you ate crap as a treat.

I think it's pretty unusual not to have some biscuits and crisps in the house with teens. I actually don't think it's a problem to eat a couple of biscuits or a small bag of crisps most days.

Cereal - we usually have shreddies, weetabix, granola but I sometimes buy a box of the sugary stuff in the holidays - it gets eaten quickly then they go back to the other stuff. DD makes her own pancakes and baked oats!

Lots of us didn't.
We certainly didn't eat out the way my children do, or have food delivered to the house or when with friends hanging out.

They are working or in Uni with part time jobs and they have the money for it.
My daughters regularly meet friends for dinner and they are very late teens.
I certainly didn't do that.

As a rule I don’t have any junk food in my apartment. Doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally eat it, of course - had marshmallows around a camp fire last night for example! I just don’t want to get into the habit of eating crap so I keep it out my cupboards.

Im 51 now, but growing up my mum has a 'sweetie drawer' and I was allowed to pick something once a week. This drawer was like a golden drawer, a drawer of wonder, a drawer i loved.

Now I struggle with moderation. I left home and realised I could eat chocolate whenever I wanted, and did. I still struggle to eat junk in moderation and I crave it.

I do think restricting something can cause issues in later life.

We have a snack drawer with crisps, chocolate and biscuits. Our 17 year old son helps himself when he wants a snack. Meals are balanced and healthy but we don’t restrict snacking. We are all active and a healthy weight.

The reason they’d choose the “junk” is because you severely restrict it, call it treats and give it on special occasions like birthdays. If it was treated like any other food, they wouldn’t do this.

I don't believe this.

This argument always gets wheeled out with booze on here (and elsewhere) as well, the thinking goes that a little bit of alcohol with a meal demystifies it and disincentives over-indulgence. I think from personal experience its the other way around. Making anything (whether its junk food or alcohol) normal sends a message that its part of day to day life and that sets children up to see it as part of their world.

Kids who grow up eating ready meals, takeaways and junk food all the time are more likely, not less likely, to choose to consume it as adults. It's no accident that there's a correlation between the normalisation of this food as part of household diets from the 1950s onwards and the huge rise in obesity.

I'm not a diet freak or a faddy eater by any stretch of the imagination -- I think diets are horrible. My kid is prone to eating more junk food than she should and its a constant struggle to incentivise healthy food, so I'm not trying to be smug about this at all. But I do think people saying keeping stuff like this in the house reduces the attraction are not being entirely honest with themselves. The more something is normalised, the more its likely to be tolerated.

Porridge, Weetabix or unsweetened Musli...

Is building a time machine to go back and prevent my own birth an option at all?

Yes, always have some crisps and biscuits in. Ice cream in summer.

Bit you are restricting it by not making it available? Our "treat drawer' is stocked with crisps, cereal bars, chocolate etc and once ita gone its gone. The meals they are provided with are healthy and nutritional.

I only shopped on friday and the kids have mainly had fruit bowls with yogurt, I think ive eaten more crisps than them.

I have noticed a few threads on here over the years where treats were restricted/not bought and has then resulted in binge eating etc.

Teaching them moderation or restricting how much they can have is a good lesson.

Out of interest, if you had a family movie night what snacks do you have? Here is popcorn, doritos with hummus or another dip and a big bar of chocolate is favoured here.

In terms of drinks, I never usually bought fizzy unless we were having a bbq etc and they could help themselves until it was gone. Now both favour fizzy flavoured water over coke.

Right, so we didn’t have any junk or treats in the house until the kids hit their teens – mainly because they kept nagging for it, and then it was a free-for-all. Looking back I wish I’d started a treat cupboard when they were little, so it wasn’t such a big deal when we finally did. My sister did this with hers – a constant little stash of crisps, chocolate, pot noodles, ice cream, cake bars etc – and her two are quite good at not going overboard. I kind of wish I’d done the same!

I don’t particularly buy much junk food for the house but we do go to the corner shop after school to choose a sweet treat for the evening :) my son really looks forward to picking a different chocolate each day, it would be easier/cheaper to get some multipacks in but he enjoys it this way and it stops me from bingeing on snacks! 😂🙈

We do have crisps in as he has them for packed lunch and A LOT of healthy snacks - my son prefers the healthy snacks!

I don’t allow any sugary crap for breakfast at all. My son is only 5 so it’s a lot easier to manage as he doesn’t really know it exists or if if he does he’s not interested 😂 breakfast is very similar to yours so egg on avacado toast, Weetabix, homemade healthy pancakes, smoked salmon bagels - he loves it

When he’s older and the novelty of picking a little sweet treat each day wears off I probably will keep more junk in the house though and just hope he eats it in moderation but it gets harder as they get older as they make their own decisions

Always have chocolate in the house dont often have crisps as I have no self control and biscuits only occasionally.

I do have it in my house, mostly because DH wants it. DC would happily eat nothing but ice cream and chocolate biscuits all day, it's hard.

I often "forget" to buy replacement junk when I go shopping. I also try to make homemade biscuits, cake etc and buy additive free/emulsifer free/high quality stuff like chocolate to make it better.

I don't buy crisps, chocolate or biscuits regularly either (there is however usually a box of icecream in the fridge). There is often some home baking but if my 12 and 15 year old are hungry after school they have some bread and butter/peanut butter/honey or some bread and olive oil, cheese toastie and fruit, yogurt, nuts etc. Then there are good home cooked meals and on weekend homemade dessert. Occasionally (if they have a group of friends coming over) we may buy fizzy drinks or crisps. But more often with friends they will end up making own pizza from scratch or pancakes or similar.

I don't think they are deprived, they have pocket money and can and do buy what they want when with friends. They are very active and eat well, nothing is restricted but I just see no point in having a junk food drawer.
I am from a Mediterranean country, live in NZ now but eat similar to how I did back home.

We have a cupboard full of crisps and chocolate bars, muesli bars, popcorn, sweets. They are always there, but my children are not really interested. They might have a kitkat after lunch sometimes. It is mostly there because we have been given it - we still have Easter eggs. My DH will eat biscuits, but we are all a healthy weight. I cook from scratch most days.
I think having it around and never banning it has given my children the opportunity to make choices for themselves, rather than me telling them what and when they can eat. (They are 13 and 11).

We've always had 'junk food' freely available in our house. DS is 15 and has free choice of all this food but chooses to eat the healthy food. He chooses eggs or bran for breakfast and rarely eats dessert or chocolate. He's gtoen up with this junk food around and its done him no harm. He doesn't see it as anything special so doesn't choose it. I think if he had grown up in a house without it, he'd see it as a treat and be eating it all the time.

When I first my DSC there was never any ‘junk’ food in the house, and as soon as any was brought in they would devour it instantly,
I introduced a ‘treat box’ that they were allowed to take whatever they wanted whenever they wanted but once it was gone it wasn’t topped up until the following week, it took 3 weeks for them to learn to moderate their own intake.
the treat cupboard still exists, some times they take fruit, a bowl of cereal or a bag of crisps.
eldest DSC is going off to uni in ‘26 and I’m confident they won’t live on junk.

I’m with you Op! Your lunch sounds wonderful, breakfast choices are great too! Definitely not restricted in any way…

Depends if they have pocket money, doesn't it? If they have pocket money or a teen job they can buy it themselves. It's not food for sustenance so doesn't need to be provided at home.

But you obviously need to restock your treat drawer so how often do you do it? Why is that a more healthy attitude to food?

My DC aren't not allowed certain types of food. I don't restrict it and say no. They all get pocket money, the older ones work. If they want to eat crap then they can buy it. My youngest daughter has a sweet tooth and will often bake to satisfy it. She's only 12 but she can make waffles, pancakes, carrot cake, all manner of biscuits and many other things. I don't see that as a bad thing and she is always happy to share her wares.

Ref the family movie night - we wouldn't have any snacks. It's not something I'd associate with eating, the film is the treat (DC are too old for a shared interest film most of the time). In the winter we might have a hot chocolate but it would never occur to me to buy a bunch of snacks foods for a movie.

This is not really true. It's human nature to like this stuff, whether it's restricted or not.

A film on the tv is a treat?! 🫣

re the stocking up I don’t really get the confusion- the same way you stock everything else? Some people shop weekly, we prefer a Deliveroo from Waitrose a few times a week. It’s the same as stocking up milk- do we need some, yes, put some in the basket then.