I banned snacks and put my kids on the Scandi diet

It’s the last straw: a whole packet of 21 KitKats has disappeared, consumed by my four sons in an afternoon, an empty wrapper left as evidence in the biscuit tin. When I confront them, they deny all knowledge but it can’t be anyone else. “Right, no more snacks,” I tell them, disgusted that their sugar addiction has made them so dishonest. “For the next week, no biscuits, no sweets, no crisps.”

“What if we’re hungry?” the eldest asks.

“Eat more at mealtimes,” I tell him firmly, although deep down I know it’s not that simple. Like every other family we know, our children are snack addicts. They expect snacks when I collect them from school – no fruit or healthy sandwiches, please – and even if they demolish two bowls of spaghetti Bolognese for supper they’ll want pudding and please may it not be fruit. Sticking to my snack ban is going to be as much of a challenge for me as it is for them.

As every parent knows, hunger is only one of the reasons why children snack – boredom, comfort eating and habit are also major drivers. The statistics from Public Health England are shocking: children aged four to 10 years should have no more than the equivalent of five to six cubes of sugar each day, yet are consuming on average 13 cubes. Sugary soft drinks including energy drinks and squashes are culprits, as well biscuits, spreads, cereals, chocolate, yoghurt, ice cream and puddings – basically, everything my children actually want to eat.

When I audit our larder I find snacks for every time of day: cereal bars, mid-morning Soreen bars and biscuits, chocolate bars for after school and supper. I never leave the house without emergency snacks in my handbag – despite knowing I’m only fuelling their snack obsession.

An easy way to self improvement is to look to the Scandis – who take a very different attitude to snacks, and have corresponding lower obesity rates among children (they also rank in the top five for children’s happiness).

I ask the Danish chef and food writer and mother of two, Trine Hahnemann, what a Scandinavian parent would give their child as a snack and she says it would be a piece of fruit, a glass of milk or a slice of rye bread with a nutritious topping. Indeed as Helen Russell, author of How to Raise a Viking, discovered as she raised her three children in Denmark, the Scandis mock the British for their preoccupation with crisps.

Chocolate bars aren’t a thing there either; the “naughtiest” snack a child can expect during the week is a very thin piece of chocolate or a handful of raisins on a slice of rye. “In Denmark, children only have treats on Friday nights after dinner; it’s a cultural thing,” Hahnemann says.

I’d do better, she says, to stop fixating on their snacks and instead turn my mind to meals. She’s lived in Denmark, Britain and the States and is convinced that Scandinavian children consume more calories at meal times than British and American children. “In Britain you have an overwhelming amount of unhealthy snacks in the supermarkets; changing kids’ attitudes starts at the table. You need to show how important meals are. When children see a parent setting the scene for a meal, laying the table, preparing a dish, they’re more respectful and interested.”

Rituals, she says, are as important to the experience of eating as taste, and in Scandinavia the ritual of sitting down together at mealtimes is still going strong.

“Junk food and convenience snacks have crept into Danish culture, too, and obesity rates are rising but at least we still dine properly together.”

I decide to give it a whirl and hide all our breakfast cereals, too, switching their usual Weetabix for Morgenmad, raw oats with full fat cow’s milk, serving it in Hahnemann’s way, which is to create a “mountain” of oats, pour a “canal” of milk around it and to sprinkle “snowflakes” of sugar on top.

My eight-year-old adores the oat ritual, asking me to repeat it with two extra servings and it’s the same for the three-year-old but their 10-year-old brother complains that the oats don’t taste of anything.

“What he means is they don’t taste of sugar,” Hahnemann says. “Children have come to expect everything to taste sugary – you need to get them out of that mindset.”

Not only are raw oats nutritious – even with a sprinkle of sugar they’re healthier than processed breakfast cereals – but they take a long time to chew, she says, which gives children plenty of time to realise that they’re full. One of the reasons why children put on excess weight, according to Hahnemann, is that foods such as sugary breakfast cereals and muffins melt in your mouth without requiring you to chew them. “If you serve food that takes time to eat, children learn to understand when they’re full,” she says.

Inspired to continue upping their mealtime calorie intake the Viking way, I set about making frikadeller, Danish meatballs, for dinner. They turn out better than I expect; I serve them with a traditional Danish cucumber salad and brown rice fully expecting to have to make everyone toast afterwards. I’m surprised; all five enjoy them. “I’ll definitely have another one,” the third boy says after a few mouthfuls but in the end he’s too full.

Not so full that he doesn’t still demand a pudding, though. I’ve pre-empted this and made a traditional Danish rice pudding with cinnamon – it’s so heavy and sticky that I could grout a brick wall with it. The baby loves it, demanding a second bowl, but alas the others don’t like the texture, probably because they’ve become too conditioned to the soft and smooth consistency of processed food.

If my children are to snack like Vikings, I must serve them rye bread with, wait for it, pork liver pate. Stronach says that if you can get your children to eat rye bread for their snack, you’re winning as it aids digestion and has a low glycaemic index, ensuring a slow release of energy and preventing sugar spikes associated with refined snacks. “This stability is crucial in managing energy and moods, and the fibre in rye supports gut health,” she says. Pate, meanwhile, is packed with vitamins B, K, iron and protein.

So, after school the following day, my children arrive home to a plate of rye bread squares spread with pork liver paté. “Just give it a try,” I urge them, without admitting that our au pair and I both spat ours into the bin (I’ve never been a fan of liver). Astonishingly, they eat it, possibly because they’re genuinely starving after two days without their usual snacks. The baby loves it so much that she licks the pâté off the bread. I’m tempted to text all my mum friends and tell them about my newfound super snack but after dinner I’m met with the same old request for something sweet. “No, that’s not a proper snack,” they moan when I suggest another slice of rye.

Still, I don’t waver: it’s rye or nothing for snacks this week, although they can switch the paté for cream cheese or crudités, which are also popular with Nordic children.

I can’t prove my children are any healthier yet or if they’ve got any taller but there are noticeable benefits to having banished sugary snacks. They don’t ask for them, for a start, and I’m certain there’s less fighting and horseplay when we first get home from school and again after supper – two sugary snack times.

I feel more confident now that I can break away from bad habits and encourage them to eat more nutritiously, though. I feel I’ve grown in my behaviour surrounding snacks, too; several times I found myself wanting to use chocolate bars as a reward or incentive – it’s scary how the unhealthy snack industry has got its claws around us parents as well as our children.

I can’t believe I’m writing this but the eight-year-old asked me to get some more pork liver pate. “I thought it would taste disgusting but it actually makes me feel good,” he says. So good that he forgives me when I confess to stumbling across a full packet of 21 KitKats forgotten at the bottom of a shopping bag.