Kids Should Eat Healthy With After School Snacking 2009: Listening Parents

Kids should eat healthy with after school snacking

Listening to his parents’ advice, Jake Gutwein of West Lafayette tends to shy away from Little Debbie snack cakes for an after-school snack.
“I don’t eat too much junk food because then they’ll get mad at me,” said the 12-year-old. Although kids tend to gravitate toward sweet high-calorie treats for after-school snacks, dietitians and parents said that kids typically can only eat the snacks that parents provide. Angie Frost, registered dietitian and nutrition educator for Crawfordsville Community School Corp., said kids normally eat unhealthy snacks after school such as snack cakes, candy bars, bags of chips, soda and fast food (if they can drive to restaurants). However, what they eat often depends on the age because parents have more control over what younger kids consume, she said. When selecting after-school snacks, she recommended parents select foods that are going to fill the nutritional gap in-between meals, especially for small children who typically do not obtain all the nutrition they need from three meals. “It’s important for them to be able to get the calories they need to function … so they can get all the vitamins and minerals that they need,” she said.
She said it’s also important that parents and children understand the difference between snacks and treats.

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