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“We just finished eating,” I said. “How could you still be hungry?”
“We didn’t just finish eating — breakfast was like 20 minutes ago. I’m starving. I’ll just have a small snack,” she said while pouring a large mixing bowl with cereal.
Later, when picking up another child from a lesson, she complained how her stomach hurt all day; “I feel like I’m going to barf. Can we go to Dairy Queen? I think I just need a snack to make me feel better.”
Then, her sister threatened to perish if she didn’t get something to tide her over until dinner. So she inhaled a pizza, and strangely wasn’t hungry for stuffed squash half an hour later. As soon as dinner was over, she went on a pantry expedition, raiding it for anything to tide herself over until the next snack.
What is with kids and snacking? Surely, snacks are essential to make it through the day, but are they necessary to make it from quarter-hour to quarter-hour? Is it bad when we can no longer remember the last real meal they ate, or if every bag and container of food in the pantry and refrigerator is opened and half-eaten?
No doubt, kids need snacks. Younger kids need them as part of a healthy diet because their stomachs are too small to hold enough food to keep them full from meal to meal. Older kids rely on snacks between sporting events and busy schedules that prevent eating at regular times. Regardless of age or schedules, however, kids also tend to snack when bored, tired, excited, when it’s raining, when it’s dry, when their phone rings, when it doesn’t ring, when they expend too many calories from blinking, and even occasionally when they are actually hungry.
With about one fourth of kids’ daily nutrition coming in the form of snacks, how do we get kids to snack healthily?
The first step is to remember the purpose of a snack is to provide nutrition between meals. Snacks are not meals, should not be larger than meals and should not replace meals. Ideally, snacks should not be served within two hours of the next scheduled meal, lest they interfere with Nibbles’ desire to eat stewed zucchini. Keep set snack times instead of allowing kids to graze all day. Chronic snacking results in consuming too many calories, and usually prevents kids from coming to the dinner table with an appetite.
Don’t supersize the snack size. To help with this, pay attention to suggested serving sizes on food containers. When providing snacks at home, a general rule of thumb for toddlers is one tablespoon of food for each year of age. For growing teenagers, a slice of pizza rather than the entire large double-crust meat lover’s version should do.
Discourage habitual snacking. It is best to set rules that keep food at the table, without allowing it to be brought into family rooms or bedrooms. Studies show kids who snack while watching TV consume many more calories than they realize. Not only that, but commercials for Frosting Fingers and Sugar Bombs will reinforce snacking, or worse, make kids beg incessantly for you to buy the stuff.
Discuss emotional eating habits. Kids may just think we are talking about their tantrums over broccoli, but explain otherwise. Kids should recognize feelings of stress, boredom or anxiety, and find healthier ways to respond to them than reaching for chips and chocolates. At the same time, parents must do their part. Pulling snacks out of purses every time a child cries just reinforces the habit.
Make a rule that kids need to ask for snacks instead of helping themselves. This will allow you to keep track of what and how much they are eating.
Keep healthy snacks available, and a variety of them. Kids may prefer high-calorie options, but if you don’t keep them stocked, they won’t be tempted. It is true that you can’t control food choices when kids are at friends’ houses, but you can control what is available at yours.
No doubt, snacks are essential. Just help your munchkins realize that snack time is not bedtime, down time, overtime, just-because time or all the time. Keeping healthy choices available and limiting availability will help unhealthy snack attacks bite the dust.
Ann-Marie Berg is a pediatric nurse practitioner and freelance writer. She can be reached at amhberg@mchsi.com.
