The Food Wars

The food wars are on at my house and, if you didn’t know better, you’d think that we had been living in a bunker for twenty years and were down to battling over the last of the Twinkie supply. That’s because my kids are constantly fighting over food, hoarding foodstuffs under their beds and behind their dressers so that their siblings won’t eat all the cheese doodles or ding-dongs.


It’s making me crazy, but I don’t know what to do about it. The way my kids clash over food you’d think that we have no access to grocery stores or that I’m stubborn and only buy food once a year—but that’s not the case. In fact, I feel as if I live at the grocery store. I spend at least two of my lunch hours a week rushing around the store pushing a grocery cart in high heels so that my kids won’t have to go without milk on their cereal the next morning. Plus I do a full-on grocery run every single week, stocking my rather large food storage room with a surplus of taco shells, cake mixes, cereal, canned goods and Spray ‘n Wash.

My son told me that the problem revolves around “snack food.” Apparently, I just don’t buy enough. If I would just buy more snacks, then he wouldn’t put his brother in a choke hold for eating one of the granola bars or pop tarts that he has claimed as his own. In my defense, I do buy “snack food.” I just consider oranges and strawberries, yogurt and string-cheese snacks. My kids obviously disagree.

What they don’t realize is that I’m not about to increase the supply line just to end the battles—mainly because it wouldn’t work. Last month I got Ritz crackers on sale for a great deal so I stocked up—eight large boxes all nestled on a shelf in my storage room. Normally I buy a single box of crackers that my kids devour in one mindless snack-fest while zoning out to hours of video games. But this time they managed to eat all eight boxes in that same time frame. Since that time, the deprivation argument just hasn’t worked with me.

So, the food wars will continue—a never ending civil war with no winners. Just don’t let my kids know that I have a stash of peanut butter cups in my nightstand. I’m okay to deprive them of “snack food,” I’m just not that keen on joining them.