s/o treats at Grandmas - treats at home, or lack thereof!

My mom pretty much let us have what we wanted, but we never really over-indulged by eating the whole bag for example!

I don't remember anything being off limits. I ate sugar cereals, cookies, Little Debbies, etc. I never had a problem with eating only that stuff maybe that's why she kept it in the house. I don't know really, she liked it too. I don't remember eating a lot of chips. Maybe she stayed away from buying those.

For my kids for some reason I drew the line in the sand at CheezIts. I don't know why I had such a adamant stand on those I allowed other junk food in the house. Not tons but enough for treats every now and then. My now 19yo DD swore when she moved out for college she would go buy CheezIts and those gummy fruit things (which have no fruit in it) but she never really did. She's very conscious of what she eats now and I guess she got over the urge for them.

Sugary cereals, pork rinds and Funyuns. I can't say that I'm all that disappointed that we weren't allowed two out of the three. I still have to resist buying Lucky Charms at the grocery store because I know I'll just pick out all of the marshmallows. Which is probably the reason my mom never bought them .

We never had any real junk food in the house, and eating out was almost never fast food. My mom made almost everything we ate, including bread. Cereals were always non-sugary ones. We had lots of fruit available, and bread and cheese and veggies and milk. There was never pop in the house. We did sometimes get pizza or go out for ice cream, but those things just weren't kept in the house because my mom and dad liked to eat healthy. My dad had a huge vegetable garden. Junk foods weren't really forbidden, but we'd have to spend our own allowance money and walk to the store (which was many blocks away) if we wanted a twinkie or whatever. We did have an uncle that would bring us candy bars every time he saw us, and my parents always allowed one candy bar if we were at the grocery store (about once a week).

My mom still eats like that. I rebelled a bit as soon as I moved out of the house by keeping pop in the house, sugared cereals, and eating lots of fast food and junk. That was all fine and dandy when I was young but if I did that now, I'd gain weight like it was my job, so I try to keep only healthy things in the house. Plus they just taste better to my more mature taste buds.

Nothing wasn't really off limits to me, but a lot of junk food was never kept in the house either. Probably because we didn't have the money.

We never had junk or convenience foods either, with the exception of Campbells soups and saltine crackers. Occasionally I would break her down at the store and get popsicles in the summertime or marshmallows in the winter. Hot dogs were rare as well. Mac and cheese in a box?? ohhh noo, not happening at my house! Cereals were never sugary, any cookies or sweets were always homemade. When fruit roll ups first came out and got big I was in elementary school - she would only buy the apple flavored ones (which I don't think they make anymore) because she thought they were healthier.

I was also limited in how much I could have  - like if there was a jar of pickles, I could only have one a day. If I had worn her down on the popsicles - one a day only. 

We also never got fast food unless we were traveling and she usually kept it to Arby's or Hardees because she thought they were healthier - and only what she had coupons for!!

So as soon as I started earning my own money (I worked at a grocery store) I started buying my own junk food. DH still laughs at me for eating spaggetios or hormel chili. I love that stuff and I think it's because I was so deprived of it as a kid. 

Fresh fruit - apparently fresh fruit was horribly expensive in the 70's

My mom would buy grapes or strawberries and write HER name on the bag with a sharpie. Then she'd be too busy to eat them and they'd go bad

Yes it was very odd and we still joke about putting our names on things. I don't think my mom has a clue what her dd's are talking about when we do that

Well, I grew up with 2 very different parents. My mom was very health conscious. She cooked most things from scratch and we had to have something green on our plate every meal (well, except breakfast). My dad ate like crap and now, consequently, has terrible health issues. There was junk food in the house growing up and there was always pop. Somehow I found a happy medium. All my siblings too. We tend to be fairly active and moderate in what is in our house. There is almost never pop in my house and all of my kids except one don't even like pop. We keep ice cream in the freezer; but as far as cookies and chips and the like I rarely buy them. In fact if they see Doritos and potato chips in the pantry, they ask who is coming over and what are we barbecuing. LOL I do like to bake and we make a lot of things from scratch. I think because of this, at least my older kids recognize that my cooking tastes better than cupcakes in a box. (this is true for meals too....they has a frozen lasagna once at someone's house and found it to be inedible and lasagna is one of their favorite meals) I believe in moderation and my kids are really good about making choices overall on their own. We have all kinds of cereal - from healthy to sugary and all my kids eat both fairly equally. The funny thing is my kids spent a night at the grandparents house and my dad let them eat all kinds of crap - in fact he encouraged it. Didn't even offer anything "healthful". The next time they were invited, 2 of my kids didn't even want to go and the other one asked if she could take some carrots and apples with her. LOL

Nothing was really off limits at our house growing up. We had a fair amount of candy but never bowls of it sitting around. We could go to the drug store a few blocks away and get what we liked now and again. My aunt would make us molded chocolate bunnies and chicks at Easter and homemade lollipops.

Mom was an amazing baker and cook so it was typical to have some kind of cookies or bars most of the time and cakes for our birthdays and always pies for the holidays. LOL, my brother had a great little side business going in grade school, trading our mom's homemade cookies for the Hostess Cupcakes or Dingdongs the other kids had.  

Mom made most main meals from scratch but we still had our share of Spaghettios and sugar cereals that she bought from the scratch and dent store where stuff was cheaper. She would occasionally let us get Pop Tarts or other junky stuff like that too if it was cheap enough. We didn't usually have soda because it was too expensive but we did have Kool Aid and Popsicles.

I think because we had that stuff around all the time we didn't feel like we needed to gorge on it when we wanted a little something. I can bake a batch of cookies or brownies, eat one or two and very easily get rid of the rest one way or another where DH will systematically eat the whole pan or batch.

My parents insisted that we eat decent meals first or we wouldn't get any treats, and that's kind of how I do things too with my kid. Right now I probably need to put my pantry on a serious diet because the cereal and snack cabinet has way too much crap in it at the moment and DD will help herself way too much if we're not paying attention. I don't mind if she has SOME of that stuff, but when she's sitting down with a cereal bowl full of Goldfish crackers and thinking that's lunch, um, NO. Just no.

ETA: Mom also had a pretty impressive back yard garden considering we lived in the city. She always grew tomatoes, green and yellow beans, sweet peas, peppers, cucumbers, raspberries, sometimes strawberries and potatoes. Once she tried to grow corn and my dad got mad when the squirrels came around and ate it all!

And to end this post, I will say that the limited edition S'mores Oreos DH just bought me last night are AMAZING! I don't think I want to let DD even try them because honestly I just don't want to share. 

My mom had me on a diet in first grade. Other kids and even my brother would have little debbies snack cakes, and I'd have those "diet" meal replacement snack bars. I wasn't overweight at all. I just was taller and outweighed my skinny brother by 10 lbs. My mom was obsessed that I'd be obese like those in my biological family, and she'd shame me anytime I ate anything she didn't like. 

She'd hide chocolate covered cherries for herself, and my brother was allowed to have whatever he wanted. 

Our sandwiches were wheat bread and miracle whip. Mom was a horrible cook. She would make ham sandwiches on wheat bread with miracle whip and that cheap, no fat paper thin ham. She'd make a whole bread loaf worth, put the individual sandwiches in those cheap, fold over plastic baggies then put them all back in the bread loaf bag and store them in the old deep freeze that my dad used to store his hunting "trophies" before they'd get sent off to the taxidermy. Everything tasted like freezer burn. 

Miracle whip is nasty on ham sandwiches fresh, and it was beyond horrible frozen and thawed. My mom would punish us if we saw each other do something wrong and didn't narc on each other. I tried not to do that because it was wrong. My brother got a lot pleasure narcing on me for throwing out my sandwiches and not eating them. 

Once I got two bags of potato chips in my lunch, so I ate both of them. I got in SO much trouble. Mom was dressing me down in public, again, and I replied that I was just doing what the bag said--'no one could eat just one'. A lady nearby just about had an aneurism trying not to laugh, which made my mom even more angry. 

I baked a lot so I could feed my sugar habit. My dad and brother loved what I made, and my mom would snack on stuff. She never sat down and ate actual meals with us. She would make dinner at 5pm even though my dad worked from 10am to 7pm. My brother and I would eat by ourselves while my mom fussed and fumed, and then dad would get leftovers when he got home. I would sit and talk to him while he ate while my mom gave us both the evil eye as she got ready for bed. 

My mom still doesn't eat well. She's pretty much a vegetarian and eats huge salads, but she thinks that dinner is a bag of popcorn or warmed up soup. She's obsessed about her weight although she's never been overweight. Its really difficult to hear her bitch about her weight problem when I can't eat at all and would love to be able to eat normally and healthfully. 

My freezer is full of single serving broccoli and cheese microwave packs--my favourite when I can eat fairly normally. I also have a lot of ice cream because it's easy on my tummy, and not having anything in my stomach on days that I'm really nauseated and can't eat normally makes my stomach feel even worse--the muscle spasms from being hungry are incredibly painful. 

My dad always had to struggle with his weight, so he was very encouraging. We loved vegetable dinners, so I'd go by the local farm's roadside stand and get green beans, new potatoes, tomatoes, corn on the cob, field peas, and summer squash. I also introduced my dad to asparagus. My mom had only made the canned or frozen kind and boiled it until you could eat it with a spoon. 

Dad and I would grill out when I'd go visit him, and we'd go to the grocery store together. I grabbed some gorgeous asparagus, and he gave me the side eye. I asked him when was the last time I had made him anything that wasn't delicious... he agreed to trust me. I showed him how to grill or roast the asparagus by rubbing the spears with olive oil, cracked black pepper and sea salt. Dad was so amazed that he told all his buddies and insisted on grilling asparagus every time they grilled out---and Dad did a grill night for the leos that took his dog training courses. The asparagus became as famous as Dad's steaks. 

Dad insisted that Sunday be our weekly treat day when I was a kid. We'd go to TCBY and get a treat or Dad would give my brother and me a couple dollars and let us ride out bikes to the corner convenience store for a coke and a candy bar. I still remember sitting on the floor watching the weekly Disney movie and sucking on my individual size pack of hershey's kisses so they'd last as long as possible. 

When I went away at school, I existed on Mountain Dew, Doritoes, and candy bars. The food in the cafeteria was horrible--greasy and full of carbs. I would eat bowls of tomato slices with ranch dressing (they had the BEST ranch dressing) as well as broccoli and cauliflower whenever they had that on the "salad bar". --iceburg lettuce, plastic tomatoes, soggy cucumbers, the hottest onion slices, mouldy broccoli and cauliflower pieces. The entrees were carbfests like tatertot casserole with "veggies" consisting of mashed potatoes and canned corn. Sometimes they had cooked cabbage--which I like, but this cabbage had been cooked so long that it was translucent, if it had ever been green. 

My inlaws have given me a really hard time about "not being a member of the 'clean plate club'" for the past 22 years. I try not to put more on my plate than I want to eat, but I also don't eat an entire entree at a restaurant. I always get to go boxes and love leftovers. I can only eat a little at a time, so I would set my plate aside to come back and snack on it an hour or two later. I don't understand why you need to keep eating everything on your plate just because it's there. Save it for another meal. 

I do try to choose snacks that are relatively healthy. I like crispy, salty snacks, but I also need whole grains and fiber, so I pick Cheddar Sun Chips. I choose ice cream that is made of real ingredients, not chemicals. I only want a few spoonfuls, not a whole pint. I like to eat my ice cream in those little cake cones--24 calories, crispy, and so much fun. It takes a lot more time to nibble on those cones, so I enjoy the ice cream a lot more. I don't pack the ice cream in, I use a small spoon and only put a couple of small spoonfuls of ice cream into the cone. 

I also enjoy sweetened iced tea. Sometimes when I think I'm really hungry and craving sugar, all I really want is iced tea with lots of lemon or peach flavour and a little bit of sugar. --sugar substitutes really bother my joints, so I use sugar in the raw. 

When I did South Beach and was trying to knock my sugar habit, I made pitchers of black cherry Kool Aid with Splenda. I stayed hydrated AND fed my sugar fiend at the same time. 

Now I prefer iced tea. I don't like my iced tea sugary sweet like most Southerners. I got used to unsweetened tea, so I only want a bit of sugar. I prefer strong flavours like lemon or peach in my tea. That's what makes them the most enjoyable, not the sugar.

There wasn't much junk food in our house growing up simply because there were 5 kids and money was tight. My Mom was a fabulous baker though so we had plenty of cookies, bars and stuff like that. Every so often she'd buy vanilla ice cream, a big bottle of orange pop and a big bottle of root beer and we had ice cream floats. That was a BIG treat!

Once we got older and my mother returned to work we had more junk food but I missed the homemade stuff.

We didn't get a lot of store bought chips or cookies. Those were special occasion foods. There was almost never soda. We didn't have a lot of money and there were a lot of mouths to feed. We sometimes had hamburgers and home made potato chips and we had no idea we were getting something better you could get at the store or a restaurant.

Now my mom's house is packed with junk food that she pulls out when the grandkids come over. There's always chips and soda in the house. Still no store bought cookies though. When mom can make cookies that are 10x better, why buy the ones at the store?

We have chips maybe once a month and they get so much soda at their grandmas' houses I don't bother to buy it for home use. Someday they can cry to their therapist that their mother never let them have soda at home and that's why they can't regulate their weight. (Although to be honest if any of my kids are going to have weight issues it's going to be over the complete free for all attitude we have with home made cookies.)