Wellness - Nutrition | 3-9 yrs
How To Choose Healthy Snacks For Kids?
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Children keep growing and also have small stomachs, so they often feel hungry. As a result, they need snacks in between meals to keep hunger at bay. Also, as children are very active and thus spend a lot of energy, three meals a day are not enough to meet their nutrition and energy requirements. So, it is necessary to provide them with snacks to fill the nutritional gaps. But having unplanned and random snacks can create problems for children, especially with regard to weight. Also, excessive and irregular snacking habits can interfere with children’s appetite and disrupt their eating pattern.
Therefore, parents need to understand a few things about healthy snacking. When children feel hungry in between meals, most parents provide them with readily available food items such as chips, biscuits and chocolates that are high in sugar. Such food items are called treats. A snack is different from a treat. According to the article, ‘Snacking Dos and Don'ts’ in popsugar.com, ‘It is important to know the difference between a treat and a snack. Essentially, a treat is empty calories and a snack contains nutrients your body needs and should offer protein and/or fiber’.
Parents can make snacking healthy by choosing the right food to be served as snacks. An ideal snack should be seen as a mini-meal and should contain protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre, etc. Sugary cereals, sweetened drinks, etc. should be avoided. It is also important to pay attention to the portion size when serving snacks to children. Also, dedicated snack and meal times are essential to prevent hunger meltdowns and limit grazing.
To learn more about hesalthy snacks, flip through the pages of this ClipBook.
How To Choose Healthy Snacks
Choose an item that gets no more than 35 percent of its calories from fat, no more than 10 percent of its calories from saturated fat, and is no more than 35 percent sugar by weight. Fruits, cheese, nuts, and seeds are exempt.
Why Do Kids Need To Snack?
Three daily meals may not be enough to provide all the nutrients kids require. Because, many kids need to eat snacks to help them grow properly and to fill any nutritional gaps, snacks are an important part of your child or teen’s day.
Snacks To Keep On Hand
​​While meals make up the majority of a child's nutritional intake, most children eat at least one snack per day. While many of the most commonly offered kids' snacks tend to be of lower nutritional value than meals, snacks still can support or ev...
Help Your Kids Choose Healthy Snacks
Offering packaged snacks high in fat, salt, and sugar isn't the best option, no matter how convenient they are; instead, try these five tips for raising healthy snackers.
Understanding Food Labels In Snack Packs
In general, when you read Nutrition Facts Labels, you should be looking for foods that are high in fibre, vitamins, and minerals and low in sugar, sodium, cholesterol, and fats (especially saturated fat and trans fat).
Snacking Dos And Don'ts
Strategic snacks can help you lose weight too by keeping your metabolism fired up. Here are some simple guidelines to help you make snacking work for you, to boost your energy level, and to reduce your waist line.
Healthy Indian Snack Recipes
Turn to these recipes to change your snacking pattern with snack ideas that are easy, quick, entertaining and yet very nutritious.
