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?

Movie night in my house usually means we have homemade pizza. We don't really do snacks with a movie....we do make popcorn occasionally 😁

”The film is the treat 😭” do u not have snacks when you go to the cinema ?

We always have some variety of crisps in the house, and during term time some cereal bars or similar for packed lunches. Other than that not really, protein bars for the teens perhaps. I don't restrict massively, if they want a packet of crisps they can have one as long as it isn't nearly a meal time and they haven't already had loads of stuff. We have an ice cream machine so do tend to have some in the freezer.

We have multipack bags of crisps, lentil chips, popcorn, some biscuits, crackers. All of these are bought by DH. I don't buy them. They are UPF empty calorie trash but unfortunately, when he buys them, I eat them, because I love crisps (not so much the biscuits). I keep asking him to stop and he does for a while then they creep back in.

You are 100% right OP. No need to keep them in. If DC fancy a treat they can go down to the shops and buy one.

I grew up in a house where junk food was always available.

I probably had some sort of junk every day.

Now as an adult, I eat a balanced diet but crave junk much more than DH (who was raised in a much healither household).

I find it really difficult to not eat sugar/crap and have to make a huge conscious effort to avoid it.

I try to avoid too much junk for DCs but we do usually have something in.
Right now, there's lots of healthy options (nuts, popcorn, seaweed, fruit, crudités, hummus, cheese) but also some crisps and chocolate and older DC has a chocolate bar for his camp lunchbox tomorrow

Seriously? That long list of breakfast options is 'restricting their choices'?

Fully agree with this - we’ve got a cupboard of ‘junk’ that would probably make some MN mothers faint at the amount of sugar/UPF! In reality it is rarely touched and Easter eggs, Christmas chocolate etc go untouched until they inevitably get thrown away for being out of date. Making certain foods a forbidden fruit is a recipe for disaster and encourages DC to gorge on them when given access

When the kids were little, yes absolutely the film was the treat. It was a time that we'd spend enjoying something altogether. The DC weren't allowed a lot of TV time so when they were little a film was definitely a treat.

They are now much older so obviously this is not the same. It's not very often that they would all sit and watch any TV together as the age range is too broad for most shared interest (12 - 20) so a movie night is not something that really happens anymore.

If we went to the cinema, we'd share a bag of minstrels or a popcorn (none of the DC are Popcorn fans) but that's only because the cinemas condition you to think it's totally normal to eat shite whilst you're watching a film. We rarely go to the cinema either now anyway.

With 65% of UK adults classified as overweight or obese, I would suggest that you are not the norm when it comes to having a nonchalant attitude to junk food.

I completely agree. There's a reason I'm still thin at 50 - it's because I was brought up with a healthy aka 'restricted' diet. I don't see eating crisps every day for lunch as normal. I never drink fizzy drinks. People use the 'binge eating when they're older' as an excuse to feed kids low effort crap IMO.

I also agree with regards to alcohol, my parents didn't drink at all, my 2 best friends parents were very lax on drinking. We were all drinking a ton whenever we went out as teens. The difference is that now i don't drink at all and they both still drink quite a lot. It was never normalised to me when I was a child as a way to cope with the stresses of day to day life.

OP your diet sounds amazing and YANBU.

What's the point of having a cupboard full of stuff that gets thrown away? I don't get it.

We have home made pizza and ice cream on movie night. No need for extra snacks. We eat nuts before dinner sometimes or hm popcorn, most crisps are UPF and empty calories ++

I’m always amazed when I see lunchboxes with a Kitkat and bag of crisps in it every day or sandwiches with chocolate spread or jam. But that is fairly standard in many cases several times a week and in some every day.

Sometimes I fancy a Jaffa cake or two, sometimes it’s a bag of crisps. They often get bought and forgotten about. It’s just DD and I at home, neither of us are big eaters so stuff going unfinished isn’t uncommon.

Yes we always have chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits etc...ds barely touches them...DD likes them more but both are a healthy weight and eat decent meals. I'm pretty easy going about this sort of thing.

Your lunch sounds lovely! But so does having a biscuit tin.

We do have things like biscuits, crisps, etc in our weekly shop yes. My mum had a bee in her bonnet about this when we were kids and we all ended up being bingers of junk. It's not what I want for mine, I don't want them to view this stuff as some forbidden holy grail that they wish and hanker for.

Teaching them about a balanced diet with the odd treat and to be able to have some self control as they get older is the goal IMO.

Yes, we have all of those foods in our house. And I’m thankful that because we’ve never created a hierarchy of foods and they are seen as normal, my kids (13 and 11) can moderate and never over indulge. If they are offered sweets or a dessert they will usually say no, as they’ve eaten enough to satisfy their hunger and dessert isn’t viewed as a treat or something that won’t be offered again.

We have one of the kid’s friends here today, and she hasn’t stopped asking for snacks and I know it’s because they are restricted in her home.

Op, why come here and pretend to want to know if yabu when really you just wanted to feel superior and talk about obesity? I really don’t understand why anyone really cares that much about what others eat. If you feel like you’re right, despite your teen expressing some unhappiness with the situation, then crack on. But then I suppose you wouldn’t be able to feel superior which is what your thread and others like it are so often really about. 🙄

I would suggest that you are not the norm either with your military style approach to your DC’s diet. Frankly it all sounds a bit depressing in your household - I suggest that you live a little and let go a bit. I’ve raised a slim young adult with a perfectly healthy, balanced attitude towards food. I don’t know many other 21yos who actively avoid UPF and make most of their meals from scratch so obviously my awful ‘nonchalant attitude’ 🤣 towards junk did no harm!

I was a fat child and snack food like biscuits and crisps were restricted at home...it just created more problems and I would eat huge amounts of "proper" food instead which just made me fatter. It was terrible really.

We have crisps, biscuits, sometimes popcorn, ice creams (especially in summer), chocolate bars, cereal, sometimes cakes. We don’t keep fizzy drinks at home. Honestly we probably have at least one of these things each every day.
But we also have lots of fruit, yoghurts (inc Greek), nuts, porridge, ingredients for home cooked meals etc.
We’re active, not overweight and it’s what we enjoy. We don’t smoke & rarely drink alcohol.

I do totally agree with you and actually we never consider anything forbidden.

I think someone has already said it but I do think it depends on the person/child.
I have 4 DC. Two of them could take or leave any junk. They get given chocolate and it will last a week. The other two would eat it the same day. If there were lots of treats around then they would eat them and the others wouldn't get any..

The thing is, that if your offspring have reached teen/young adult age, and you can't keep some treat food in the house because you fear they'll eat junk daily, then you clearly neglected to teach them moderation and good dietary habits when they were little. We do have treats in the house, but I very rarely need to replensh them, as my children understand moderation. I need to replace the porridge oats and the branflakes far more frequently than the sugary cereal, because my (teen) children understand about making healthy choices. The sugar cereal, the crisps, the biscuits are there, but they don't consider overeating them, because they've learnt what good eating (and treating) habits look life.

If we'd never had treats routinely in the house, and had made them the forbidden fruit, how would we give taught them those skills?

In my experience, teens whose diets are restricted go mental as soon as they have control of their own diets, and end up with disordered eating, because they've not learnt the appropriate skills of everything in moderation.

No child benefits from a parents who is being hypervigilient about food, negatively exaggerating the threat of obesity and health issues and focusing their parenting philosophy on might what happen if they eat junk food.

Exactly. I suggest that you take note OP.