Do you expect dessert after a meal?

I don’t expect meals…

I’m fairly normal weight, and I don’t pay too much attention to what I eat. I eat what is available and affordable. And I take advantage of free when possible.

Yesterday I had four doughnuts and a brownie brought in by coworkers, and no dinner. The day before I had cereal for breakfast and a good dinner of ham, corn, and potatoes. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.

Probably won’t have another full dinner until payday, though.

No. We rarely eat dessert. Even when we go out we usually don’t have dessert. If we do, we share.

My family were never dessert eaters and my husband’s weren’t either. My ex husband’s mother made dessert every night. She came to stay with us for a holiday and made dessert every day (it was the only way it was going to happen!).

I agree with you. I don’t think it’s healthy. An occasional dessert’s fine, but not routinely eating sweet foods.

No.

No, don’t want/need pudding, never have. I’m not into desserts at all, it’s like whenever the wife & I go out for a meal i’ll pass, but like with most women she’s all…“I shouldn’t really, but go on then.”
For what it’s worth, i’m 6 feet tall & weigh 12 stone & can pretty much eat anything without worrying about weight, burn those calories off baby.

That line about “No dessert until you eat your veggies,” sends a message to the kid that desserts are more desirable than veggies. What would happen if we said, “No veggies til you eat your dessert!”

@Dutchess_III How about one having nothing to do with the other? Growing up that is how it was for me. I was similar to @Seek_Kolinahr that food was food, sweet or not, and I ate when I was hungry. Now that is all distorted for me; my eating habits deteriorated somewhat. I tend to crave savory not sweet, so I never was a huge dessert eater.

My mom would say things like, “don’t eat now it will ruin your dinner.” She rarely used that line, because usually we were out playing and she would call us in for dinner. My point is, it wouldn’t matter if I had grabbed a cookie or a carrot before dinner.

Dessert is usually too much work. My grandmother always had a fancy dessert at the end of every meal—or at least ice cream with fruit. I just can’t be bothered with more dishes or extra money if I go to a restaurant.

Often I will have cheese cake, if it’s available, if we’re at a resturaunt. I could LIVE on cheese cake, which is why I almost never have it at the house. So, that’s a special treat for me. :)

Oh hell no. Fruit is much better.

I was astonished when I began in college and saw that many kids considered it normal to have pie, cookies, or ice cream after every meal, and the dining hall was happy to accomodate them.

No.

My husband does. Like you, I picked up the habit to an extent and gained 30 pounds our first year of marriage.

I have worked hard to either not provide dessert after meals, provide fruit or something sweet but fairly healthy, or provide a small treat.

I think it’s a very bad expectation to get dessert after meals. Hubby sometimes even wants sweets after lunch or breakfast. (BTW – he’s like 100 lbs overweight)

We didn’t regularly have dessert when I was growing up; like you, sweets were sometimes used as snacks. My Ex’s family always had dessert but very small meals and when my BIL lived with us, he asked if we could have desserts. I do often want a little something sweet after a meal but popping one piece of chocolate in my mouth satisfies me. I rarely have dessert in a restaurant.

In the Pachyderm household we always got dessert after lunch or supper, and to this day I feel cheated if I don’t get that shot of sweetness.

@bookish1 College was an eye opener for me when it came to what people eat. Some people had dessert after every meal, which I had not experienced before. Some people willingly, drank milk with dinner, their own choice, which I had not experienced before. Some people would microwave food in their room or eat out at restaurants quite often when the food was already paid for in their dorm cafeteria plan; I couldn’t wrap my head around that sort of waste of money. Our cafeterias were pretty good, with a large choice of a food. And, they weren’t eating outside of the cafeteria to eat healthier food, they would microwave mac and cheese or eat graham crackers in their room, it made no sense to me. Late night we would sometimes order in pizza, but that was outside of normal meal times.

Hells to the yeah. A meal ain’t a full meal without dessert.

We usually don’t have dessert. If we do its hours after the meal. If we are with our family we either go for a short walk or just talk and catch up on family happenings. A light dessert may come later.

My family generally doesn’t do dessert after lunch or supper. My dad sometimes wants something to “crunch” after a meal, but it’s not all the time. I’ve recently gotten into the routine of just eating my meals, but then between lunch and supper (around 3 when I’m done with school for the day) and after supper (probably around 8 or 9 while I’m watching TV) I’ll have a healthy and usually sweet snack, like toast, graham crackers, fruit, or yogurt. I’m not overweight, although both my parents are. They raised me to eat much more consciously than they did.

I very rarely have a dessert after a meal unless I am staying at my Grandmother’s or it’s a special occassion (ie: with Christmas dinner for example). Once I start to feel full I like to stop eating so it is not often that I even want a dessert after I have already eaten a main course (and maybe a starter if I’m at a restaurant).

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room and @bob_ Do you prefer sweets in general? Could easily have dessert for dinner? Do you like sweet food for breakfast? I’m just curious if the people who always want dessert after a meal, actually really just want dessert in general. For instance, I don’t like sweet food for breakfast, but my husband prefers it. He wants a slice of cake, donuts, pie or pancakes. I want an omelette or some other food that is specifically not sweet.

I grew up on and still love all kinds of sweets—candy (esp. fudge), pudding, ice cream, etc.—but in recent years I’ve been advised more than once to cut down on sugar. So now I’m eating more fruit, sometimes with all three meals. No dessert for breakfast. I too like eggs for breakfast, plus grapefuit slices, toast and sometimes very crisp bacon. I can also go without dessert at lunch. But that last mean just isn’t complete for me if I don’t have at least fruit, and sometimes something more interesting, like ice cream or pastry.

I love sweets too but never order dessert after a meal in a restaurant. I do have sherbet or pie later after dinner sometimes. Lately I have been on a Raspberry sherbet jag since the weasther has warmed up. I skipped my 7–8 o’ clock dessert last night though. Try to make it only a few days a week, but…..

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room I love sweets, I just don’t crave them often. If that makes any sense? Eating fruit is still eating sugar. Not that I am saying it is the same. You probably would need to eat two oranges to equal a half cup of regular ice cream, and my guess is dessert people don’t only eat a ½ cup of ice cream when they eat ice cream. Plus, all the other bad things in ice cream that we are not even touching on. Is you family overwieght?

Growing up we only had dessert for special occasions, like Thanksgiving or a birthday. Eating at a dining hall, I used to take advantage of desserts almost everyday. Later, eating on my own, I used to not eat them at all unless out to dinner at a nice restaurant. And then as my kids got older it seemed like we always had cookies around, and often had ice cream and sometimes cake.

That’s no small part why I gained so much weight.. I have been off sugar since Christmas, I feel much better now.

I have no memory of whether we had dessert after dinner. But now, recently, I’ve craved it. I usually have some lemon cake with frozen strawberries and Cool Whip and I Love it.

Never at home and only at a restaurant about 30% of the time. I’m full enough from the meal usually. If I were still hungry, I’d have more food.

My wife’s family likes to have fruit after a meal. I never got into that either.

Both dessert and fruit are, for me, an extra treat or snack – not really part of the meal.

I admit my downfall is my sweet tooth. However there is no expectation that a meal should have a dessert.

Another thing is like @bookish1 a fruit is also a dessert. I do eat a lot of fruit though.

Doubles as a snack throw in some nuts or peanutbutter on top and its a meal.

I do add things to sweeten my meal. For example: Berries ‘n nuts or cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, allspice or cinnamon etc on oatmeal or quinoa flakes, baked apples. Green smoothies still contain one or two fruits for me.

Refined sugar tastes weird to me now. I also don’t often use stevia or xylitol, but I still use them in the occasional baked good.

I even nixed the sugary toothpastes and mouthwashes and started making my own. Started having the best trips to the dentist after that too. It blew my mind at the time to find out they put sugar and in so much quantity in supposed tooth decay prevention items. I guess tasting good is a priority. Though due to crowding they still want to take my wisdom teeth, the brats.

Physiologically – yes. It’s so bad. At my college dining hall there are always warm cookies and soft serve ice cream available. And, well, I’m trying to gain weight, so I partake. After lunch and after dinner.

Now immediately after I eat a meal I develop an insatiable sweet tooth. I’ve trained myself!

Btw I didn’t make the edit window but I will admit I am sugar addict. Somewhat reformed now. But still the addiction is still there.

Truly for me I feel this is terrible. I have never struggled with an addiction like I do sugar.
Yes gluten and dairy was hard for a year or so and with it went a lot of carbs. And I do get better when I eat nutritionally complete meals.

But the prevalence of it and a combined bad day and I might just go on a sugar binge. Odd thing is the taste is off too me now, but still I do it.

The way my body feels after though is nasty. I hurt. So that reminder makes it easier to stay on track.

I like dessert and will adjust the size of the main course if I am going to have one. Usually I will cut my mean in half at the outset and put it in a take out box while it is still clean. I can then eat dessert guilt free.

@LuckyGuy Wait – you’re Jewish! You’re not allowed to do anything guilt-free!

I usually can’t even finish a whole meal unless I’m ravenous, I still won’t eat sweets right after a savoury meal.

If I’m eating out though, I’ll order a dessert to take home and eat later when I’m hungry.

No. We actually aren’t allowed to have dessert in the house pretty much ever, because my dad is incapable of self control with food, especially around desserts. The only exceptions are holidays, birthdays, and Halloween. Let’s put it this way- when my dad wants something sweet, he’ll get a box of 12 ice cream sandwiches. He’ll split six up between me and my two sisters (two each, which we have to eat on separate days), and he will eat the other six…all in the same night, within a couple of hours. And whenever my sisters and I would have something sweet around, like on Halloween, he would guilt trip us for some of our candy, or even steal some of it after we went to sleep. It got to the point that we had to hide our candy if we wanted to actually eat any of it ourselves. As a result, I now have similar problems with sweets- when I get a chance to have them, I almost never turn them down. It’s something I’m trying to work on.

My ’‘desserts’’ are havin a cigarette after the meal. No, I never have desserts, nor am I really a fan of sweets. But when I do eat them, they’re usually as a snack at some point in the day.

@LuckyGuy I do basically the same, but slightly differently. If my husband and I are going to order dessert when we are out, we usually split an entree knowing we are going to order a dessert. Sometimes we get an appetizer or an extra side with the one entree and then wind up still being two full to have the dessert. We either change our minds and don’t order the dessert at that point, or order it to go home. Maybe that is a Jewish thing. :) i see a lot of people in Boca splitting their food at cheesecake Factory. Even more Jewish, sometimes the price of the desserts dissuade us, and we pick up something on the way home instead. LOL. Depends if the restaurant has a dessert we know we love or not.

@JLeslie, my brother and I were both skinny till our late 20s. After that, he got heavy and stayed that way. I too added excess pounds in my early 30s and battled my weight on and of through the years. But for much of that time I managed to maintain more or less the “right” weight for my 6’!” frame. And that’s where I am today.

I often use a two for one coupon when I go out. I get them either from the Entertainment book or the newspaper.
@janbb Here’s the required guilt… I don’t want to look cheap so we will order two meals for the price of one split them both in half and take them home for another day. We do get a dessert which we will split.
By using the coupon and splitting, we get 4 meals for the price of one and at half the calories!
I honestly don’t know why everyone doesn’t do that.

A real dessert after a meal is usually reserved for special occasion dinners (which includes eating in a restaurant, since we do it so rarely). This was the case while I was growing up, too…but even still, most of my maternal family is very overweight. I am moderately overweight.

On those special occasions: If we’re out and I know I’m going to want dessert, I eat a smaller meal so I can enjoy the treat without feeling sick from overeating. If we’re at home, I’ll usually eat the dessert much later (see below), rather than right after the meal.

However, I crave something sweet every day, it’s just separate from a meal. Usually a middle of the night snack (I’m awake all night, I’m not waking up to eat it.) A candy bar or some cookies…something terrible for me. In the past, I rarely ate sweets; my junk food of choice was savory, crunchy foods. I don’t know how I developed such a sweet tooth, but I wish it’d never happened. :(

@LuckyGuy LMAO. I don’t want to look cheap, so I use a two for one coupon….

Still in love with you. :)

I love a good coupon myself.

@augustlan Did you quit drinking soda or some other sweet drink? When I quit coke I started wanting dessert more. Honestly, I think the Coke was better for me.

Generally my eating habits are like @Seek_Kolinahr . Random as hell, sometimes I don’t eat all day other days I’ll have just one giant meal. Generally though I munch on little things throughout the day. If I do have a “real dinner” I generally don’t have dessert because I’m too full afterwards. Desserts are reserved for 3am when I’m high and craving something sweet :P

No. I’ve never liked sweet food. In a restaurant, if a cheeseboard is an option I’ll have that instead. Sometimes I freak the staff by asking for another starter. And sometimes I just finish off with a good quality top-shelf cognac.

@JLeslie Many years ago I quit drinking regular sodas and switched to diet. My love for sweets came a long time after that, though. I really don’t know what did it. There are still some sweets that are too sweet for me, especially some kinds of cake frosting. And I still prefer my sweets to have some crunch in them. I don’t like plain old chocolate, for instance. It has to have nuts in it. Weird.

Also, I should add that I have always had bad eating habits in general. I eat like @Seek_Kolinahr does. Whatever, whenever, with no rhyme or reason.

@JLeslie So many coupons…. so little time…

I don’‘t know if it my imagination or not but the meal does not taste good to me if it is at full price. I just can’t get the taste of sucker out of my mouth. :-P

Please understand that I will tip royally – on the price of the entire meal without the coupon.

Cutting a meal in half at the beginning is how I maintain my svelte figure and still enjoy nice dinners. Twice!

@LuckyGuy Well, @janbb might have accused you of not being Jewish for eating without guilt, but you get your Jewish title back with not wanting to pay full retail. Sometimes I do purposely want leftovers so I don’t have to prepare lunch for my husband the next day. I guess that is almost the same as the joke what does a Jewish wife make for dinner? Reservations. Bada pum!

I don’t really like sweet things. I almost never eat anything sweet. On hot days, however, I will sometimes go out for ice cream. If I am having a big fancy meal, then no, I would not expect a dessert.

Up in these northern climes a sweet tooth is common and we eat a lot of sweets and pastries and chocolate. When I was growing up a meal wasn’t complete unless it ended with a sweet. Custard was the usual sweet and with added suet pudding was a delight. Nowadays I don’t bother with a sweet unless I am eating out. We were all normal weight.

I hardly ever eat dessert after a meal at home. If I do, it’s fruit. At a restaurant, though, I almost always get dessert. My husband and I eat out about once a week and we like to go all out – appetizer, entree, and dessert.

I don’t expect dessert, but I definitely like it.

No, I never liked dessert. I dated a woman whose family would always eat dessert with coffee after dinner and that seemed excessive to me because I was full. How did they have room for that lol….

I was never raised to even think of desert. Maybe just a treat now and then. Sweets were also banned in our home as were soft drinks and fizzy drinks. As I have got older I often feel I need something sweet after my main course. But small, not a desert. It just kind of finishes it off for me. Not every time but sometimes. I do believe though it can become an expected habit if done a lot. Like any habit I suppose.

@LornaLove A soft drink is a fizzy drink. Technically a soft drink is anything that isn’t a “hard” drink, as in hard liquor, but primarily soft drink is used as an alternative name for soda/pop.

To clarify, a fizzy drink doesn’t feel like it’s soft, but it is. But if you pour rum into it it becomes hard. But not hard like a rock. Just sayin’. :)

@Dutchess_III Right. And, on Sunday back in the day some towns didn’t allow fizzy drinks, so people went out for ice cream with syrup on top, rather than soda water with syrup in it or the ever popular ice cream float. Hence, the Sundae.

We don’t usually eat desert. Occasionally we’ll have ice cream or something, but most of the time we don’t.
We’re all at healthy weights.

@AshLeigh pssst! DesSert! I don’t eat desert ever. Too dry. Tastes like sand. :)

I…didn’t know that @JLeslie. What was their reasoning? No happiness on Sunday?

We didn’t have dessert on a regular basis when I was growing up. We had sweets around and could have them if we wanted them. But we also had fruits and fresh veggies too. My mom always made you a homemade, from scratch cake of your choice for your birthday. Considering that there were eight children in my family, that is a great deal of scratch cakes in one year. I am the only person in my family who has ever had a weight problem. (My mom always said I had more of an inactivity problem than an eating problem. I’m a reader and a people watcher.)

My husband’s mother and grandmother made homemade, from scratch desserts EVERY night. They even made homemade donuts. He talks about them with great fondness. He’s had a weight problem for the majority of his life. His father is in his mid-70s and has a weight problem. They still eat dessert every night.

I don’t think the dessert is some much the problem as the calories you burn. My dad has always been a big sweet eater. Constantly snacking on sweets. Even to this day at 93 years old, he loves his sweets. He’s never had an ounce of fat on his frame. He’s always been very active. He kept moving his entire life. He was a walker, a bicyclist, he did and God bless him still does calisthenics every morning of his life.

I’m down 20 pounds in the last 3 months, btw and my husband is down 40 pounds. Yea, us!! May 1 was one year not smoking too. Double yea us. Sorry for the self-shout out. But I am really pumped and proud.

@Dutchess_III You caused me to google and it seems there is some controversy over the origins of the ice cream sundae.

@bkcunningham That’s awesome! Yay you and your hubby for sure. :)

Excellent @JLeslie! Something new. I’ll look it it more carefully, but on the face of it I was right…no fun on Sunday! :)

NIce @bkcunningham. Have you noticed a difference since you quit smoking?

@Blackberry I know…I know someone who starts planning what to have for dinner as soon as they finish lunch. I’m like “Whaaaa? I can’t even think about food right now!”

Absolutely. But why limit the sugar until after dinner?

Now, do I want ice cream or tiramisu?

@Dutchess_III I knew it was blue laws, what I didn’t know was that so many cities claim to be the first place of the sundae with slight variations to practically the same story.

@tinyfaery Read my link, you’ll want the ice cream. I recently learned that Paciugo has gelato shops in California. If there is one near you get that. Their gelato is unbelievable! About half the fat of ice cream and much better in my opinion.

Because sugar fills you up and you won’t be hungry for healthy food @tinyfaery. My question is…why offer the sugar at all?

If you mean having more energy, more lung capacity, better sense of smell, better sense of taste, my clothes and house smell better, I have more money in my pocket, we aren’t sick as much as before, I don’t feel embarrassed when I hug someone that I smell like an ashtray, my car is cleaner; yes, I have noticed a huge difference.

Thank you, @JLeslie.

Who said I wanted healthy food?

oops.

That was the parent’s reasoning @tinyfaery, not the kids’.

@JLeslie Soft drinks are referred to as cordial maybe there and coke as fizzy drink or pop.

@LornaLove Oh, are you in the UK? That explains the different definitions. In the US a cordial is usually used to refer to a liqueur. We actually don’t even use the term fizzy drink commonly, but we all know what it means.

In Kansas the fight is on over whether it’s soda or pop (I vote ‘pop’). Either way it’s an abbreviation of ‘soda pop.’

@Dutchess_III I use the when in Rome philosophy on the pop vs. soda bit.

I’m not in Rome. I’m in Kansas. The disagreement is between me and my kids. That automatically means I’m right. (Everyone else says “pop.” My kids say “soda.” I don’t know why. I raised them better than that. I’m am SO disappointed! :) Lord, if only that was the most serious things going on in my life with them…..but they’re good. Things could be a lot, lot worse. I love them.

@Dutchess_III I would use pop with you and soda with them. However, I think they should use pop with you. LOL. For the record I say soda, but since I went to college in MI I have many friends who say pop, so while with them I usually change over to pop.

Yeah, ‘Soda” seems to be a northern/eastern thing. My oldest came back with it after an extended stay in Washington / Seattle about 10 years ago. Well, Seattle is so way cooler than Wichita that THEY MUST be right!

LOL. Northern/eastern thing, and then you talk about Seattle. I guess you mean all points north, even the pacific northwest. Just struck me funny. Northeast for sure is soda, midwest generally is pop, but there are exceptions. Some parts of the south say coke for all soft drinks, which is blasphemy, and otherwise they usually say soda. I would assume the west coast uses soda, especially California, I actually would not have assumed that for Washington. I’m not sure what the west uses? The are actually all sorts of exceptions around the country with small pockets/communities that use the other term when most of the state says the other.

Soda kind of makes more sense doesn’t it? It is made with soda water.

Well, north west and east. At any rate, places more “sophisticated’ than Kansas. Maybe even places South, like Florida use “soda.”
OK…I always say “Coke,” sometimes with the disclaimer “Diet” for someone who doesn’t know me, because that’s all I drink. And I drink quite a bit (2 32 oz’s per day, on average.)
Husband “You want a coke?”
Me “Of course I do! How can you even ask?! AFTER 12 YEARS YOU STILL DON’T KNOW???”
Husband “Have I told you you look 20 years old today?”
Me “OK. I am mollified even though I know U R LYING!!”

:) :)

@Dutchess_III Uhh it’s definitely soda. (Northeastern here)

@Dutchess_III Coke is fine if it is actually a Coke. Check out this map for soda vs. pop vs coke usage in the US. I can tell you in Memphis most people said soda, with a few who said coke generically.

By the way restaurant workers cannot use coke unless it is Coke. I’m not sure what trouble they can get in, but it is a big no no.

No I did not expect dessert after meals or anytime.
We were raised with the basics.( no junk food).
However i have read that in France they eat the dessert first before the main meal
as it increases the ensymes in digesting.
Also in European countries (France) they each small meals in a course of an evening.
Usually they wait a bit before eating again ( 2nd course etc meanwhile drinking wine, in small doses.

No, except when celebrating.

@JLeslie No, I don’t prefer sweets in general, I just like to have some at the end of the meal.

No. I am not a dessert person, except maybe a hot fudge sundae once in a while.

Mmmm! What about cheescake @AshlynM? Hot fudge cheescake!

You’re like my bf and I’m like your husband! Lol I love dessert but I don’t always expect it. depends… I eat dessert less after meals since I met him and I think that saved me a lot of calories hahha