Article about kids eating too many snacks

[Nicest of the Damned]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfm ... 8315&tsp=1

According to Dr. Lisa Dana, a mother and pediatrician quoted in the article:

"Yes, kids are eating way too many snacks,... A 2-year-old can make it without a snack between meals. We've gotten into this mindset that kids should eat all the time. This catches up with them when they become adults and they're used to eating all the time. They get used to this mindless eating. And people wonder why we have a problem with obesity in this country."

[Over43]

The Chronicle is one of my favorite newspapers. Thanks for posting this. Salted Seaweed?

[wosnes]

According to Dr. Lisa Dana, a mother and pediatrician quoted in the article:

"Yes, kids are eating way too many snacks,... A 2-year-old can make it without a snack between meals. We've gotten into this mindset that kids should eat all the time. This catches up with them when they become adults and they're used to eating all the time. They get used to this mindless eating. And people wonder why we have a problem with obesity in this country."

The only thing I disagree with in the quote is that it "catches up with them when they become adults." It appears that it's catching up with them much earlier than that!

[marygrace]

I agree with this article completely. While I'm not yet a parent, I am a writer for a parenting magazine, so am very familiar with all sorts of topics plaguing parents in the realm of food and nutrition. I wish I could write a story on why kids SHOULDN'T snack, but I don't think my editors would ever approve because most readers would freak out. Don't allow your kids food any time they want it? But they're HUNGRY! That's wrong! Urghhh....

[kccc]

Hm... I absolutely agree that the "perma-snacking" that the article describes is a very bad thing. I see a lot of kids labeled as "picky eaters" who graze all day. Of course they don't want dinner!

However, I'm not sure that most small children can manage on only 3 meals. Their tummies are very small, and they're both active and growing. Many cultures include another small meal for kids - a "tea" or the like.

The kind of "snacks" we had when my son was young was more like planned "mini-meals" - he sat down to eat a small bit of food mid-morning and mid-afternoon (if he asked). And at our house, a "snack" and a "treat" were different things. Snacks only included foods that would be perfectly acceptable as part of a meal. Sweets and junk food are treats, and to be limited.

[Jane1721]

Very interesting article, I forwarded it to my sister. My nieces (ages 3 and 7) ask for food constantly. I told them once that they should not eat if they are not hungry, so now when they ask for food (still constantly), they say the are hungry. Obesity is prevalent in their father's side of the family, which makes it a pretty big issue for my sister and her husband to deal with.

[reinhard]

I've got no problem with "a meal called snack" (this is what snack used to be) for kids when they come home after school. My only issue with using that terminology is that it might make it easy to slippery slope into permasnacking, which is what "snacking" usually means today.

A way to help is to use that formalizing speed bump, our old friend the plate. I also prefer the term "appetizer" to "snack" if it's remotely close to dinner (appeals to little girls' innate sense of fanciness). I make them an "appetizer plate" with a mix of "healthy" and more substantial things. Occasionally they'll violently object to something I put there, but usually the visual appeal is sufficient. This mini buffet on a plate strategy is a great way to introduce new foods to kids, too. I use it at breakfast pretty much every weekday. To make raw vegetables more appealing, I pour a little salad dressing into a shot glass as "dip." If I'd pre-dressed the vegetables in a salad or presented them naked, my girls wouldn't (initially at least) have touched them, but the dipping is fancy-fun and they not infrequently ask for (gasp) seconds. Then they're used to the vegetables and will eat them even without dip.

Reinhard

[Nicest of the Damned]

The Chronicle is one of my favorite newspapers. Thanks for posting this. Salted Seaweed?

I eat teriyaki-flavored nori as snacks (only on S days, now). It's good, and pretty healthy. I'm not sure about this "salted seaweed"- probably higher in sodium than the nori I eat.

The hidden assumption that "good" foods must be good in any quantity rears its head here. You don't need to eat "junk" food to be overweight. Eating too much healthy food will do it, too. Here, it's the kids who are eating fruit all the time. No S got me out of this trap. I thought, since most of what we cooked was Mediterranean-style or Asian-style and we went easy on fat, it was healthy and I could eat as much as I wanted at meals. Then I wondered why I was still fat.

There's also the assumption that organic or "natural" food can't be bad for you. Natural sugars are still sugar, and still contain the calories of sugar. Salt and fat are natural. Just because something's organic or natural, doesn't mean it's OK to eat in unlimited quantities, as some people seem to think. I don't think you can get most kids to not like sugar, salt, and fat (I suspect humans are hard-wired to like those things), but getting them used to having them all the time can't be good.

[Nicest of the Damned]

I've got no problem with "a meal called snack" (this is what snack used to be) for kids when they come home after school. My only issue with using that terminology is that it might make it easy to slippery slope into permasnacking, which is what "snacking" usually means today.

A way to help is to use that formalizing speed bump, our old friend the plate.

I do this. On S days, I can have snacks, but my rules say that:

They have to go on a plate (or in a bowl) before I can eat them. It has to be a plate or bowl for just me- no eating directly from a communal bowl of chips or candy.

I have to sit down to eat them.

If they came from a package, the package must be closed up and put away before I can start eating.

I've adopted these rules to keep myself from permasnacking. It's harder to graze when you can't eat directly from the package and can't eat standing up in the kitchen.

I think snacks were more like "a meal called snack" than my parents always having food in case I got hungry when I was a kid, too. I'm 35. I wonder when this changed.

[jellybeans01]

good article, I have two toddlers right now and it is true that there is this pressure that you need to be giving them food all the time

[wosnes]

When I was reading the quote from Dr. Dana, I thought about how the goal when my girls were babies was to keep decreasing feedings until they got to three meals -- and maybe a snack. I remember growing up that we either had a snack after school if dinner was later, or a snack after dinner if dinner was early (I had one friend whose family always ate dinner at 4 PM.)

I think the problem with snacking is two-fold: 1) we eat all the time. 2) there are no rules such as sitting down to eat a snack. We eat when we watch TV, drive the car, walk down the street, in some cases while we work, in bed, and so on.

[Nicest of the Damned]

I think the problem with snacking is two-fold: 1) we eat all the time. 2) there are no rules such as sitting down to eat a snack. We eat when we watch TV, drive the car, walk down the street, in some cases while we work, in bed, and so on.

I think eating with no rules is an experiment that we've tried in recent years, and it has failed. Those rules surrounding eating turned out to have a good reason for being there, after all. No S is good because it restores some of that lost structure to our eating patterns.

[Nicest of the Damned]

A little extra motivation for No-S'ing parents:

Do you know where kids learn their eating habits? For the most part, it's at home, from their parents. As anybody who's spent time with kids knows, kids like to imitate what they see their parents doing. If you want your kids to have healthy, moderate eating habits, the best way to get that is to model those habits yourself. "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't work very well. How you eat is showing your kids the way grown-ups should eat.

[leafy_greens]

I read so many articles like this - many in woman's magazines like All You - about how families are putting a stop to snacking. "Great," I think, "people are catching on." And then the article goes on to say that the family is still snacking, but just with vegetables, fruit and "healthy" things. Hello - these are snacks too!

[marygrace]

I read so many articles like this - many in woman's magazines like All You - about how families are putting a stop to snacking. "Great," I think, "people are catching on." And then the article goes on to say that the family is still snacking, but just with vegetables, fruit and "healthy" things. Hello - these are snacks too!

I see this too, and I find it incredibly annoying.

[Nicest of the Damned]

I've got no problem with "a meal called snack" (this is what snack used to be) for kids when they come home after school. My only issue with using that terminology is that it might make it easy to slippery slope into permasnacking, which is what "snacking" usually means today.

Don't the British have a mini-meal around four o'clock, that they call tea? You could call it that. Or you could call it "appetizer", like you do. I was partial to the word "hors d'oeuvres" as a kid (though I had no idea how to spell it until I took French in seventh grade). I also liked the word "canapes". Those words appealed to a little girl's innate sense of formality, as you said. The Russians have zakuski, the Mandarin Chinese have qian cai, the Japanese have zensai, the Spanish have tapas, the Greeks and Turks have mezze. I'm sure other cultures have afternoon mini-meals or pre-meal bites, and words for them that could appeal to a kid's sense of formality and exoticism. The important things are that it is not eating on demand at any time, and that it doesn't consist mostly or entirely of junk food. Those are the biggest problems with snacking as it's done in the US now.

Don't think this is just word games. It is word games, but word games have power when it comes to food. Restaurant owners and food marketers know this. How often do you see "polenta" on a menu, as opposed to "cornmeal mush"? Brian Wansink did some research, and giving foods appealing names makes people eat more of them and think they are better than the same foods with less appealing names.

Making your kids sit up at the table for tea or snack has an advantage, even aside from discouraging permasnacking. Any mess they make will be contained to the kitchen and dining room, not spread out through the house, car, stroller, and God alone knows where else.