The constant feeding / snacking of children

[Lordofthebantams]

At swimming lessons tonight I've sat next to two children chomping their way through a packet of crisps and a packet of chocolate biscuits at 4pm. ( No eating on the poolside but never mind that, the little darlings need some salty junk).

We had a day out with friends on Tuesday at a farm park and kids are being handed food every 5 minutes.

You go down the street and everywhere you look the toddlers in buggies have their little hands stuffed in packets of puffs or gripping a biscuit.

It's no wonder we have such chubby children everywhere.

Wow just wow.

I definitely think there is an issue where a child feeling a little hungry and needing to wait for a meal has become like a violation of their human rights, and there is probably a bit of an issue with some kids/adults never learning to tolerate the feeling of hunger. It’s one of the main reasons WLI are so popular - you can lose weight without ever feeling hungry. BUT I do think there is something more going on when it comes to children who are overweight or obese. I’m willing to admit my own children don’t have the perfect diet and they snack a lot. The older 3 (2 teens and a tween) eat an enormous amount of food, and always have. A mix of both healthy and unhealthy food. Yes, they are all active and do a decent amount of physical activity everyday, but we are always told that weight is far more controlled by diet than exercise, so by that logic, my children should all be overweight. If anything, they could probably do with putting on a few more pounds. I’m not sure whether there is something genetic that influences it, which is why it’s less common to see obese children with slim parents, or if things like metabolism are somewhat set in very early childhood, so if kids aren’t living in active families and getting a lot of physical activity at a young age, they lean towards a sluggish metabolism through life. Otherwise the ‘weight is 80% diet not exercise’ just does not hold up for children, and perhaps far more focus should go into addressing the exercise side rather than the diet side.

Ooh I just bet you've been waiting for the right thread for that little virtue signalling anecdote about a child who nearly collapsed,but didn't.

Just the same as drinking wine in front of your children,just another addiction.oohbut I forgot,you people probably pour it into a mug,so to hide it,way to go.

The irony of posting these two comments minutes apart.

I mean if the snacking children had just done an hours swimming lesson, then yes the choice of snack could have been better, but it’s actually really good for recovery to eat & drink something straight after physical exercise. I have two very sporty kids (older than yours now) and we call the first half hour after intense exercise (2 hour swim training / hour of endurance work for example) ‘free’ in terms of calories or type of food. obviously without indulging to excess, but if they want a packet of sweets then that’s the time to have one (along with something healthy and filling like a banana), or they often will have a chocolate milk (preferably organic from the milk vending machine, but realistically sometimes it’s a yazoo or frijj bottle). Chocolate milk is excellent recovery fuel. I have an issue in that I struggle to get enough calories into my kids despite them eating masses, as they are both growing boys (tween & teen), and expend so much energy every day doing multiple sports. So yes they snack, and yes sometimes it’s junk (look up REDs and you’ll see why for teen athletes clean eating often isn’t enough). Of course when they were smaller I was very much more health conscious - they did have a morning and an afternoon snack, and it was very similar to their after school snack now - fresh fruit & veg, and buttered baguette slices or bagels, or some homemade flapjack. We are it on the go though as we weren’t often at home.

We have never made any food off limits (apart from when they were under 2 and so we heavily limited refined sugar and UPFs), we just talk to them about moderation and mostly making healthy choices.

Can someone please organise a knighthood for the OP ?

Thing is, we are all paying for an NHS that has to treat a frighteningly endemic obesity crisis. I have a friend who works in a dental hospital who was talking about working in ‘bariatrics’. When I queried what that was in terms of dentistry, she told me that it is a specially enlarged and reinforced dental chair to accommodate obese people who can’t attend a normal dentist. Their lists are full. We are all paying for that.

When my kids were little (now teens) it annoyed me when they would regale what they were fed at friends houses. Chocolate, cake, biscuits and crisps on arrival, all in adult sized portions, squashes and sugary drinks, meals that involved no veg or fruit. Just crap. It made them resent living in a house where we eat normally - 3 meals a day and help yourself to fruit or veg if you’re hungry.

now as teens they see a normal piece of home made cake or brownie as ‘tiny’ simply because shop and cafe portions are so ridiculously massive. Neither of my teens can eat like that and not put on weight, which i try to explain. Now they both want to wear tiny shorts and arse grazing skirts, they are ‘getting it’ more. Not an ‘eating normally does not involve 4000 calories of continual drip fed crap’ attitude, more like ‘I can’t do that and look how I want to’. So they still have what I consider to be a distorted view of what healthy eating looks like.

We don’t eat in an extreme way in terms of healthy outlooks. We do have cake and biscuits and crisps, just not daily. It’s not real food and has zero nutritional value. Why people want to put this shit into their kids is beyond me. And yes, I do judge because it is making this generation of children both fat and unhealthy. My primary class has numerous overweight children and children who struggle to settle and concentrate after a lunchbox full of packets of fake food. It’s desperately sad to see.

We have all always paid to the nhs. We paid when everyone smoked, when people lived off fried foods and when companies poisoned our citizens through asbestos etc and tobacco companies made them addicted. Why is this any worse?

there is also some bizarre dramatic conclusions about obesity. Obese is a number on the BMI. Only rarely is it bariatric etc.

How can you do a snack at 3pm when they’re at school?

Quite easily, @PloddingAlong21, if you look back at what @Velumental had to put up with from her MIL. They just turn up at the kids' break time and shove crap through the fence to them ... and yes it happens at the school where I used to live too

"I stand by snacking is inherently problematic but crisps and biscuits as a snack seems excessive and sitting in the pushchair munching constantly is not teaching good food habits."

So why do you give your children crap snacks too of crumpets, cereal and pancakes?

yes it was. because humans across the entire planet have snacked for millenia...

My 4 children are now late 20's/early 30's. We went to church every week (service abt 1 hr). Unless I was breastfeeding them they had no food/snacks. Now every family with young children comes with drinks and boxes of snacks - for a 1 hr service. I don't get it.

Fruit, breadsticks, carrot sticks, hummus (if at home!) Babybel, crackers and cheese...

I too am nonplussed by the seemingly constant junk-food snacking that goes on in some families.

I was amazed by the amount of snacking that my own grandchildren became accustomed to as toddlers. We couldn't go anywhere, not even to the local park and playground for an hour or two, without having to take multiple snacks and drinks with us for the children.

I never took bags full of snacks for my own children, neither did anyone else, as far as I can recall. It's not that we never had anything - if we were at the park on a hot sunny day and an ice-cream van arrived, for example, we would get the kids an ice cream. But having a snack when out and about wasn't an expectation.

I think the link is more about appetite and learning to listen to it. Slim children may eat a lot or a little but by not breaking the link between appetite and food, they're unlikely to overeat and thus become fat.

And by appetite I mean the genuine feeling of having a full/empty tummy. There are plenty of parents who will say that their overweight child has a vast appetite, but that isn't true appetite, it's learned behaviour.

Are you serious? They just eat whenever, whatever!!!!@

These are presumably the children you brought up though, who think their own children need constant snacks?

1 in 5 children in the UK are obese by end of primary school

Is that true?? Yikes there was one fat kid in my whole primary school in the 90s!

Being brought up a certain way doesn't make you immune to current parenting trends, good or bad.

The nhs only classify children as overweight, not obese

I doubt you’d be able to tell most of them are overweight by looking at them. It just means their weight is on that percentile

Ah I was with you until this. Will not cook two meals and have a wide variety of delicious and balanced meals, but there’s no way I’m spending £10 on something my kids ask for but won’t eat

Re read the OP's first post. It's not snacking per se but the constant snacking on unhealty stuff , which becomes the norm rather than an occasional treat.

But that’s made up. She obviously doesn’t know whether complete strangers “constantly” snack on stuff.

you can’t pretend it’s common for children to be eating constantly.

I am starting to really see this too and I have young children who love snacking! We definitely fell into this trap of convienience snacks but are now trying to be healthier as a family.

One things I've noticed is since my oldest started school, all the children are handed junk food by their parents the second they leave the classroom at home time and my daughter naturally expects the same.

Why do children need snacks as soon as they leave? Surely they can wait the 10 minutes or however long to get home!

It's so difficult to navigate when there's so much rubbish food available and children's menu's in restaurants are awful offering nuggets, sausages, pizza and so on.

On the first day DS started infant school, I hid biscuits in his coat pocket because I thought he'd never survive the morning without the snack he used to be given at pre-school. He was fine, of course, and has grown into a slim adult who now snacks constantly between meals 😂p.s. He has teeth a film star would envy.