Are you able to place any of the junk foods up higher, so they can’t reach it?

They’re probably hungry, so if you’re able to place the junk foods up higher, place healthier things on the bottom.

Well You have to forbid eating in any area other than the kitchen.. If you find crumbs in the living room or bedrooms then you punish them for eating in the wrong area’s instead of punishing them for eating the food.. if they only eat in the kitchen then there want be as much sneaking b/c they can be seen quickly and then they want be in front of a T.V. just munching away.

My parents let me and my brother eat junk food after dinner. They kept it in the house and let us eat is as we pleased. We were never overweight and always healthy. We didn’t over eat junk food but they never limited our junk food too much either.
My cousin on the other hand had a mother that controlled everything she ate. I would literally be starving at night when I stayed at her house. My cousin would sneak junk food all the time. The result is her being overweight, she’s still overweight 15 years later. I’ve found that kids with parents who try to limit and control everything they eat has more problems than parents who let their kids decide when they want to snack (a reasonable amount at least).

I would start buying less snacks and junkfood or else find a hiding place. Keep them in a box in your bedroom closet or in your dresser drawers. Tell them you stopped buying them.

My stepson comes on weekends and he is a very picky eater. He’ll never eat what we make for dinner. He puts bags of chips and cookies and candy in his backpack at his mom’s before he comes to our house. He just throws the wrappers on the floor (the trashcan is 2 ft away from his bed too), so I know he’s been eating junk. I yell at him for it b/c I don’t want an ant or mouse problem with all the crumbs! I also hide certain foods that I buy b/c he will eat them all in one sitting and I use them to pack in my other child’s lunch every day.

My suggestion is to make all food available at all times. As soon as you start restricting it it becomes becomes important to them. The more tightly you cling to control, the more they are going to want it and the more they are going to obsess about it and sneak it. When they get older they’ll start getting it other places and won’t be able to stop. Food insecurity is what happens when a person’s food source is so tightly controlled and restricted by someone else, that they don’t feel sure that it will always be there, or they feel like whoever’s controlling the food is untrustworthy with it in some way. They think about food all the time, and the more restricted it is, the more they feel the need to take control for themselves. That is why children steal. It’s not because of too little restriction. It’s because of too much. Children who do not have heavy food control have no need to steal and don’t value junk food as much or at all over other foods. Children who do will lie, sneak, binge, and think about food all the time. Especially the kind that is most restricted and they’re made to feel guilty about.
My children, toddlers to teens, have always had food available to them, any time, day or night, and any kind of food. None of them are overweight or unhealthy, they eat all kinds of food and will mostly eat whatever is cooked, though they’re free to say no thanks and scavenge for something else. They don’t eat in secret because there’s no shame or fear of getting in trouble. They don’t steal or eat as much as they can when they can, because they know that there will always be food available. It’s not going anywhere and no one’s going to take it from them.
The only way to end food insecurity is to give food security.