Snacks from our childhoods we’d never regularly give to our kids

Food has a way of comforting, transporting and enveloping us in warm, fuzzy feelings. Particularly when we associate that food with our childhoods. But times have certainly changed, and our children are destined to miss out on those delicious, yet hardly nutritious treats we enjoyed as kids. Is your childhood favourite here?

When researching this post, I threw the floor open to the Babyology team – asking what treats they enjoyed as kids, that they would never give to their own children. I was overwhelmed by the strange and wonderful kiddie snacks that came thick and fast: lettuce with a sprinkling of white sugar, our British staff members recall Spam Fritters (served at school no less!) and sandwiches spread with cream and sugar.

While children these days are certainly not deprived, our understanding of what constitutes a nutritious snack has come a long way. While kids can still enjoy a treat every now and again – can you imagine allowing them these treats every afternoon after school.

Big Boss Candy Sticks and Fags (which later became Fads) were huge when I was a kid. If you were really flush, you could buy the chocolate version. Lollies made to look like cigarettes and cigars – what were we thinking?!

Sherbet was another sugar-high inducing treat. Just a simple snack of plastic straws filled with coloured crystals of sickly-sweet powder.

What about that quintessential after-school treat – the little white paper bag filled with mixed lollies? The corner store was a hive of activity as kids scrounged to get a few cents together to share a bag of treasures.

I’m sure for many of us, the line between after-school snack and party food was often blurred. It wasn’t uncommon to come home to a fresh batch of Chocolate Crackles or Honey Joys. Of course, now both these retro delights are banished to the party food table.

While research now tells us the best thing for our children to drink is water, soft drink was certainly a popular thirst-quencher for kids back in the day.

What about those little snack-sized packs of potato chips in the school lunch box? Salt and vinegar Samboy’s can still make our editor’s mouth water 30-odd years on, but maybe you were more of a Twisties or Burger Rings kid. Either way, we’re betting none of those red-light snacks appear in your own kids’ lunch boxes.

And toffee apples. They’re a fruit, right?

Babyologists, we’d love to know what childhood snacks and treats you indulged in, that you would never give to your own children.