The Value of Snack Time

Snacks are essential to building a strong and active metabolism, and snack time is a great way to introduce healthy foods to our kids. Children are often reluctant to experiment with unknown foods without parental encouragement.  This is a great opportunity for us to set an example, and share new foods with our children. Keep in mind that preparation is a key factor in a child’s receptivity to foods. Children enjoy doing things for themselves.  This includes assisting you with basic food preparation tasks as well as simple foods that enable them to eat independently.  This is why finger foods are so popular with young children.  

Healthy Eating 101

As parents of young children, we are often concerned that our children are not eating enough.  However, the key to healthy eating is nutritional quality not quantity. It may seem prudent to introduce a few novelty snack products as a means of encouraging your child to develop a regular eating habit.  But beware of prepared foods, even those foods that are specifically produced to appeal to children. Many of these products are not as nutritional or as healthy as they advertise.  Here are some helpful guidelines to keep in mind when you plan and prepare snack foods for your child:

1. Try to have a carbohydrate, (complex carbohydrates are best) with a little protein or a fat during each meal or snack to keep insulin levels normal and energy levels steady from one small meal to the next.

2. Increase the availability of whole grains.  Try bran cereals instead of other cold cereals with less than 4 grams of dietary fiber per serving.  Use brown or wild rice instead of white rice.  Try bulgur wheat and whole wheat bread rather than white.  Overall, increase the consumption of legumes like lentils, kidney beans, white or black beans, and chick peas.  And don’t forget the fresh and steamed vegetables and fresh fruits too!

3. Have your child eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables everyday.

4. Include three to four servings (or more) of low-fat dairy foods rich in calcium in your meals each day.

5. Limit the amounts of visible fat your child eats (the fats you add to food).  Limit butter, salad dressing, cream cheese, bacon, nuts, and cooking oil used to prepare foods. Do not, however, limit fat intake in any child less than 2 years of age, as this could stunt growth.

6. Get your children moving! Find out what interests him or her. Plan an active family outing, like ice skating, instead of buying movie tickets.

The Grocery Guru

With healthy habits 101 in mind, what foods can be added to your shopping lists to keep your kids nutritionally savvy? 

In the bread group: low fat crackers, bread sticks, pretzels, baked chips, trail mix, vanilla wafers, graham crackers, air-popped popcorn

In the fruit and vegetable groups: baby carrots or carrot sticks, banana slices, peach or pear slices, unsweetened fruit juices, strawberry slices, cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes, raisins or yogurt-covered raisins, oranges and tangerine sections, celery sticks stuffed with low-fat cream cheese or natural peanut butter, apple wedges, melon balls and grapes
 
 In the milk group: low-fat milk string cheese, low-fat cottage  or white cheese or, no sugar added yogurt or ice cream products, fruit smoothies (made with nonfat yogurt, fruit, skim milk low-fat yogurt

Menu Magic

We now have a good idea of what kinds of foods will benefit the health of our children, but how do we put these foods together?  And how do we prepare these foods without a sizeable amount of time and effort?  Nutritious, well planned meals and snacks every 3-4 hours are a vital part of your child's daily energy and nutrient needs. Think of kids' snack time as a planned mini meal and not a spur of the moment indulgence. Deciding when, how much and what types of mini meals or snack foods to serve your children four to five times a day are important considerations in planning your child's overall diet.  Here are a few small meal and snack ideas to get you started with your 3-10 year old.

Healthy Breakfast Ideas

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4 ounces skim or 1% milk
1 cup Bran Chex or fiber rich cereal
½ cup berries
 
1 cup cooked oatmeal with 6 chopped cashews and ground cinnamon
1 cup melon cubes
1 cup skim or 1% milk

Mid Morning Snack

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½ a banana
1 tbsp peanut or apple butter

Healthy Lunch Ideas

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Turkey on 2 slices of whole wheat bread
1 teaspoon light mayonnaise
1 cup salad greens with 1 tablespoon oil and vinegar dressing
1 fresh apple
8-ounce chocolate milk box (made from low-fat milk)
 
1 ½ cups lentil soup
1 cup salad greens with 1 tablespoon salad dressing
1 fresh pear
8 ounces skim or 1% milk

Mid Afternoon Snack

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A handful of baby carrots
1 tbsp of low fat cream cheese to dip in
2 sesame or whole wheat crackers

Healthy Dinner Ideas

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½-1 cup cooked bow tie pasta
½-1 cup steamed broccoli, carrots, and zucchini
¼ cup of marinara sauce
1 Tablespoon of parmesan cheese
8 ounces of skim or 1% milk
 
3-4 ounces of broiled filet of fish (Halibut, Orange Roughy, Salmon, etc.)
½-1 cup steamed mixed vegetables
½ cup cooked wild rice
1 cup salad greens
1 tablespoon salad dressing
8 ounces skim or 1% milk

How to Foster Healthy Habits

There are some great meal and snack ideas that offer healthy alternatives and are super easy to prepare.  However, the biggest hurdle still remains:  Will our kids want to eat these foods?  What strategies can we come up with to enlist the interest of our children?  Let’s face it, without our children begging for these small meals, our chances for getting them excited in healthy eating are close to none. Children will be receptive to change, but only when you give them the authority to make the changes.  Try these tips to get your kids involved in the lifestyle of eating healthy:

1. Talk to your kids about why changes are being made to their meals.  No child will ever embrace the idea of an apple instead of potato chips for snack unless you start to educate them as to why they need to make that choice.

2. Teach your children about The Food Guide Pyramid.  Reinforce the importance of selecting a variety of foods each day. During mealtimes, ask your child to identify which food groups are represented on their plate.

3. Don’t rule out treats completely. At least three times per week, allow your child to choose a “junk food” for snack. Chronic deprivation will often backfire.

4. Take your kids grocery shopping with you.  Ask them to find something leafy, a whole fruit or a carton of something to drink with the number 1 on it instead of 2.  (As a general rule of thumb when grocery shopping:  Try to push your cart only through the outside walls of the store.  The inner aisles are all infested with processed, refined starch and high sugar foods.  The exterior is where all fresh food is displayed).

5. Invite your kids to be a part of preparing their meals.  If your child invests time in preparing their own food, he or she will be more likely to pile all that healthy food on his or her dinner plate.

6. Turn meal planning into a game or a mystery that only they can solve. For example: For breakfast find something crunchy that’s not sweet, something cold and wet to pour over the crunchy food and add color to it:  Add something either green, bright purple or cherry red this morning.  Sometimes children really are creative when it comes to putting a small meal together.

7. Help your kids not to be swayed by advertising. Many prepared foods that are marketed as kid-friendly are poor in nutrition.  Teach your kids to look past a box or package design and focus on content so that they know themselves what they are eating.

8. Be patient with their adjustment and open dialogue without demands each time the topic comes up. Expect to hear some complaints. When kids know that the plan is fair, they usually come around.

9. Make your focus on healthy eating a family goal by posting a sign on the refrigerator as a family motivated effort.  The sign may read:  The Smiths are good at finding smarter ways of eating by choosing healthier food for our family to live a long happy life together.  Read this sign daily to your children or have them read it before your meal or snack preparing time.

Fun Snack Ideas

This brings us back to the same conclusion we started with: Children like to eat what is fun.  How can we work with our kids to invent fun meals together?  Try some of these recipes and watch how quickly your child takes over as the “healthy” Iron Chef in your household:

Apple Surprise: Cut out the inside of an apple with a corer or knife. Remove the core and all apple seeds. Fill the apple with peanut butter or a mixture of peanut butter and raisins.

Make your own trail mix:  Add any kind of oat, corn, rice, or wheat cereal; chocolate chips, raisins, other dried fruit bits; shredded coconut; peanuts or other chopped nuts.  Pour this mix over fat-free plain yogurt with a tbsp of honey.

Orange Sipper:  Use a knife or the tip of a potato peeler to poke a hole about one third of the way through an orange. Insert a plastic straw into the hole. When thirsty, suck the orange juice out of the orange.

Cracker layers:  Add a slice of cheese, a teaspoon of tuna and an olive to a wholesome cracker.

Cookie Cutter Sandwiches: Using a cookie cutter in the shape of a heart, square, angel etc. cut through two pieces of bread, a cheese slice, and even meat.  Let your kid pick out the shape he/she wants.

Veggie burger as snack:  Heat up a veggie burger and then mash it into a pulp.  Add a ½ slice of whole wheat pita for dipping.

Go Fishing: Turn eating into a game: Put a tablespoon of peanut butter on a plate. Stick gold fish crackers into the peanut butter.  Then add a handful of pretzel sticks on the side. Kids can go fishing by dipping their pretzel sticks in the peanut butter and then fish for the goldfish crackers.

When preparing snacks, much of the time your kids won’t be home to eat their culinary creations on the spot.  To take food to go from home try filling a muffin tin with healthy finger foods -- whole wheat crackers, cheese cubes, halved cashews, sliced fruits and vegetables, salad dressing and yogurt for dipping, and the like. It keeps snacks neat and the can take them to day care, school, on a trip or even at home as they move from room to room while playing.  For road trips or outings, put grapes (seedless), banana (halves) and orange (pieces in zip lock bags or containers and stick them in the freezer for a couple hours.  They are great to eat frozen or just as they are starting to un-thaw.

Not only will these nutrition tips and menu suggestions guide your kids to healthy eating habits, but they also serve your own health and fitness goals at the same time.  Whether we realize it or not, we are role models for our children to emanate and we cannot turn a blind eye to our own diets.

From the time parents first introduce table food into their child's diet, they begin to set the tone for the development of their child's eating habits. Good eating habits are learned, and parents must serve as healthy role models to guide their children to make nutritious food choices for a long healthy life.