RachBlue
Full Member
Just wanted to share something - I hear a lot of people here & about in the world saying that keeping treats in for the kids is destroying their good intentions.
Aside from the hopefully obvious fact that if you're eating them, the kids aren't going to get them anyway, I wanted to share a bit of history.
My mum used to work all day, and I'd be at school, and at about 6:30pm just after eating tea, she'd take me for a walk to the corner shop, to buy me a single bar of chocolate for that night.
Now, my mum was a smoker, so she'd buy her ciggies at the same time, but it also meant she never had to have stacks of multi-packs of sweets in the house, and also I never went short of a special treat - I could choose whatever I fancied, usually a Galaxy bar or a Yorkie bar. I don't remember asking for the huge bars, like 200g, but I'm pretty sure she would just have said no! (An under-used word, methinks...
)
It's my opinion that buying multi-packs (which look oh-so-appealing price-wise, I know) is a false economy for most people I've ever met, offline and on, because usually mum (and often dad as well) will eat all but 2 or 3 of the individual bars, which do make it to the child for whom they were intended, ending up paying MORE than the single unit price for each sweet that passes the little 'un's lips, and (worse than that) ending up with an unwanted calorific wallop on their own waistlines!
Changing your diet is about changing your thinking, including on what's good economically, even when so many of us are on very tight budgets - chips are cheaper than melon and fresh tomatoes, for example, but that doesn't mean we're going to start living off them.
But multipacks are NOT cheap if any of them end up unwantedly in the adult's paws, and I know I for one (no kids) wouldn't be able to have a pack of Kit Kats or crisps or something in the cupboard without talking myself into having more than one a day - I've actually made that mistake before, in fact.
And it's SO not about being smart or strong-willed, those kinds of foods with that fat-sugar (or fat-salt) combo have such a massive impact biologically that they're damned near addictive, at least when they're ready to hand.
So, just sharing - make of it what you will, but a food isn't for the kids if you're eating it, so the bit to focus on is how to make sure you don't get the chance in the first place!
Aside from the hopefully obvious fact that if you're eating them, the kids aren't going to get them anyway, I wanted to share a bit of history.
My mum used to work all day, and I'd be at school, and at about 6:30pm just after eating tea, she'd take me for a walk to the corner shop, to buy me a single bar of chocolate for that night.
Now, my mum was a smoker, so she'd buy her ciggies at the same time, but it also meant she never had to have stacks of multi-packs of sweets in the house, and also I never went short of a special treat - I could choose whatever I fancied, usually a Galaxy bar or a Yorkie bar. I don't remember asking for the huge bars, like 200g, but I'm pretty sure she would just have said no! (An under-used word, methinks...
)It's my opinion that buying multi-packs (which look oh-so-appealing price-wise, I know) is a false economy for most people I've ever met, offline and on, because usually mum (and often dad as well) will eat all but 2 or 3 of the individual bars, which do make it to the child for whom they were intended, ending up paying MORE than the single unit price for each sweet that passes the little 'un's lips, and (worse than that) ending up with an unwanted calorific wallop on their own waistlines!
Changing your diet is about changing your thinking, including on what's good economically, even when so many of us are on very tight budgets - chips are cheaper than melon and fresh tomatoes, for example, but that doesn't mean we're going to start living off them.
But multipacks are NOT cheap if any of them end up unwantedly in the adult's paws, and I know I for one (no kids) wouldn't be able to have a pack of Kit Kats or crisps or something in the cupboard without talking myself into having more than one a day - I've actually made that mistake before, in fact.
And it's SO not about being smart or strong-willed, those kinds of foods with that fat-sugar (or fat-salt) combo have such a massive impact biologically that they're damned near addictive, at least when they're ready to hand.
So, just sharing - make of it what you will, but a food isn't for the kids if you're eating it, so the bit to focus on is how to make sure you don't get the chance in the first place!
