Healthy Snacks for Kids

In addition to their three regular meals, kids often get quite a few calories from the snacks they eat throughout the day.

Unfortunately, for too many kids, that means a lot of extra calories, sugar, and fat. In addition to increasing the risks of childhood obesity, snacks that aren’t healthy can put your kids at risk for cavities, especially if they are eating sticky foods like fruit snacks or candy.

Snacks can be a good part of your child’s diet, though, including low-calorie snacks and low-fat snacks like fresh fruit.

Healthy Snacks

In addition to fresh fruit, which are often high in fiber and vitamin C, low in fat, and have no added sugar, other healthy snacks that are quick and easy for kids to eat can include:

fresh fruit, such as apples, bananas, grapes, oranges, strawberries, watermelon, etc.
dried fruits, including raisins and prunes, although these are considered sticky foods that can put kids at increased risk for cavities, so consider having your kids brush and floss after eating
fruit cups or canned fruit in water, 100% fruit juice or light syrup
raw vegetables, including carrots, celery, or broccoli, that can be served with a low-fat dip or dressing
dairy products, such as low-fat cheese, yogurt, and pudding, or a homemade fruit smoothie
whole grain snacks, which can include some breakfast cereals, crackers, cereal bars, baked chips, and popcorn (without added butter), or pretzels
popsicles made with 100% fruit juice

Although not low in fat or calories, nuts and trail mix can also be considered a healthy snack from if a child is only given a single serving and it is not eaten on a daily basis.

What your child has to drink when he snacks can also be important. Many kids drink juice, tea, soda, or fruit drinks when they have their daily snack, which can greatly increase the amount of calories they are getting at snack time. Instead, limit your child to drinking water, low-fat or fat-free milk, and 100% fruit juice.

Unhealthy Snacks Habits

In addition to getting snacks with a lot of sugar and fat, getting too many snacks or snack serving sizes that are simply too large are habits that are unhealthy for kids.

You can avoid most unhealthy snack habits by:

not letting your kids eat unhealthy snacks, including high-fat snacks and high-calorie snacks, except as an occasional treat. These can include cookies, chips, candy, doughnuts, fruit drinks, soda, etc.
having a regular snack time for your kids — usually late morning and early afternoon for toddlers and preschoolers and just after-school for older kids. Keep in mind that most kids shouldn’t need a bedtime snack though.
having nutritious snacks handy and ready for your kids to eat
limiting snacks to just 100 to 150 calorie servings so that they don’t turn into an extra meal
not allowing snacks to be too close to lunch or dinner

If you do nothing else, at least monitor the serving size of your child’s snacks, especially if you give your child prepackaged snack foods. For example, if your child’s after-school snack consists of Oreo cookies, keep in mind that it takes just three Oreos to 160 calories and a lot of extra fat and sugar in his diet. And if he eats six or nine Oreo cookies, that quickly adds up to an extra meal — and not a very healthy meal.

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Experts urge screening for obesity in kids

Doctors should screen children and teens between 6 and 18 years for extra pounds, a federal task force recommends.

For children who are found to be obese based on their body mass index (BMI), a standard measure of the relationship between height and weight, the task force also calls for referrals to a comprehensive program that includes dietary advice, physical activity, and behavioral counseling to promote weight loss.

The new recommendations update earlier ones from 2005. Skyrocketing rates of obesity have reached between 12 and 18 percent in 2- to 19-year-olds, increasing up to 6-fold since the 1970s, members of the United States Preventive Services Task Force report in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. Obesity is linked to the early development of diabetes and high blood pressure.

For their update, the task force reviewed 13 studies of behavioral intervention in 1258 obese children and adolescents.

Moderate- to high-intensity programs, involving more than 25 hours of contact with the child and/or the family over a six-month period, resulted in a decrease in BMI 12 months after the beginning of the intervention.

In addition to dietary and physical activity counseling, effective programs included behavioral-management techniques such as self-monitoring and eating management. However, the programs only worked in children who followed through on treatment.

Harms of screening — for example, adverse effects on growth, eating-disorder pathology, or mental health issues — were judged to be minimal.

It is unclear if the recommendations can be applied to children who are overweight but not obese. And there was no convincing support for interventions that lasted less than 25 hours per six months, or for screening children below age 6.

Yet some experts take issue with what they consider the narrow age bracket of the recommendation.

“The USPSTF falls short of the mark in not recognizing the developmental trajectory of obesity in childhood,” writes Dr. Sandra G. Hassink, from the Dupont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, in a related commentary.

Hassink urges pediatricians to screen all children. “Working with families to screen for high-risk nutrition and activity behaviors that contribute to obesity in early childhood must be part of that task,” she writes.

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Tag Archives: childhood obesity

Healthy Snacks for Kids

Healthy Snacks for Kids

Healthy Snacks

Unhealthy Snacks Habits

Experts urge screening for obesity in kids

Experts urge screening for obesity in kids