I Am a Pediatrician - Please Stop Feeding Your Kids These 5 Snacks.
As a pediatrician, I often see the harmful effects of unhealthy snacks on children's weight and health.
Getting kids to choose healthy foods is more than just saying “no” to junk food. It's more difficult than ever to provide your children with a nutritious diet in today's food environment. Unhealthy food is everywhere, it's cheap, it's accessible it's tasty, it's ready to grab and go and often costs less than healthy food.
The real cost of these so-called “kids’ foods” is that they usually have poor nutritional quality – and are particularly high in salt and sugar. Kids are likely to eat more calories of these processed foods without feeling full.
I've been working with families for decades, and surprisingly unhealthy foods are often discovered in two areas:
Snacks
Breakfast
However, I am also a full-time working pediatrician with two young kids. I am not a chef, and despite my passion for children's nutrition, I am also a realist. I promise you, dear readers, that the snacks I recommend will take minimal effort and preparation, allowing you to help your child eat healthy foods without going crazy in the process.
Why focus on snacks?
Many families focus their nutrition efforts on meals and pay little attention to snacks. Many believe that the biggest source of nutrition in a child's diet is breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but that is not always the case.
In fact, for some children, snacks may make up a larger portion of their daily intake than three meals. While families are more likely plan and cook meals, snacks are often an afterthought - an unplanned grab-and-go food.
I also see brilliant marketing campaigns to convince parents that ultra-processed snack foods are healthy.
Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors and colors, and added sugars are just some of the harmful ingredients in many popular children's snacks. These ingredients have been linked to weight gain, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Despite these health risks, they are marketed as nutritious foods. It is time to put an end to the fiction that these foods are good for our kids.
Who is this for?
This article is not for people wanting to count calories. This is also not to take the place of any recommendations you have been given by your child's pediatrician or registered dietician.
This article is for anyone who wants the entire family to eat healthier, and avoid falling for sneaky marketing tactics. These recommendations are helpful for children at a healthy weight as well as families who want to help their child lose weight. In short, healthy snacks benefit the whole family.
In this article, I'll provide you with a list of some of the worst kid's snacks that are marketed as healthy so that you can avoid them. You can then replace them with nutrition-rich alternatives to improve your child's health, boost their microbiome, and even improve behavior.
Some Fun Facts about Snacks
According to the US Department of Agriculture, one in five school-age children has up to six snacks a day. Although a variety of factors are involved in the development of excess weight, one major contributor to childhood obesity has been the growing popularity of ultra-processed snack foods (eg, potato chips, cookies, crackers, candy) among children.
Kids are not the only ones snacking more, according to the USDA, most adults have 2 or more snacks per day, and snacks on average comprise almost a quarter of total calories.
An analysis by Statistica determined that, average Americans consume over 12.5 pounds of cookies and crackers per year, 2.5 pounds of chips, and 4.5 pounds of tortilla chips/flips and pretzels. That is over one pound of cookies and crackers per person per month!
Not all snacks are unhealthy though, research also shows that fruits are common healthy choices for many children, which can help your child feel full, increase fiber, and provide more energy and nutrients.
Food Marketers Target Your Children - And they are Good At It.
Targeted food marketing is remarkably effective, that is why companies are willing to pay almost 2 billion dollars annually.
The impact of food marketing on children's food preferences is precise and powerful. It has a detrimental influence on eating habits, as well as diet and weight management. Food marketing makes children eat more, and ask for the specific foods they see in ads -- mostly snack foods, sugary drinks, and fast food.
Messages in food advertising encourage children to pester their parents and eat more junk food. They create positive emotional associations with the foods that harm their health.
Perhaps not surprisingly, less than 1% of marketing dollars go towards the marketing of fruits and vegetables. Over 90% of food marketing dollars go towards unhealthy foods.
Modified from Obesity Action
So, without further ado, here are the four snacks that I invite you to stop feeding your kids:
Goldfish Crackers, Cheddar Bunnies and other Cheddar crackers.
We all know them and love them, so why the hatred for this happy fishy friend? The goldfish cracker is the best selling of all Pepperidge farm crackers and they are so popular that the Pennsylvania plant that produces goldfish crackers produces 200 Million goldfish crackers PER DAY! That is so many that if you lined them up tail to nose they would cross across the United States. Even Julia Child was known to serve goldfish crackers as an appetizer before dinner.
There are some good things about goldfish:
they are shelf-stable so they last in your cabinets
they pose little risk for choking
they have a nice tasty salty finish, much like any other cracker.
Unlike many crackers, they are low in sugar, and actually have some whole grains put into them.
They are a staple at preschools and daycares. Kids love them, and it makes sense that parents love them too.
Like all ultra-processed foods, they are designed to get people (even young kids) to eat more and buy more.
Well, let’s take a close look at goldfish crackers and compare them to say, Cheetos (regular and baked Cheetos), purely at the level of nutritional content.
Hmm, when you start comparing numbers, they look pretty similar.
Because they have slightly less sugar, a tiny more fiber, and fewer ingredients they are ever so slightly more healthy than Cheetos, but not by much. But here is where their marketing is brilliant - most don't bat an eye seeing a preschool hand out Goldfish crackers at snack time, but many would take issue with a preschool offering Cheetos.
Goldfish and Cheddar Bunnies are nutrient-poor, low-fiber, highly processed crackers, much akin to Cheetos.
Healthier Choices: Ok, so an alternative to goldfish crackers has to be quick, easy and shelf-stable. I would advocate for frozen peas as a great alternative. If peas are a non-starter, and you need something closer to the cracker, why not try popcorn (age >4), puffed corn, or plain Os.
Flavored Yogurt
Yogurt is a great snack for kids, right? It has calcium, it has protein, and it can come in all sorts of fruity flavors that kids love. Plus... probiotics - you all know how I feel about the microbiome. Yogurt can absolutely be a part of healthy eating habits.
.... but flavored yogurt has gone bonkers!
Some flavored yogurt has as much or more sugar than ice cream. And I’m not talking about the natural sugars that are in milk and fruit, I am talking about added refined sugar.
Look at this: a half cup of strawberry ice cream has 14 grams of sugar, while a container of Yoplait Original Strawberry yogurt has 19 grams of sugar. That is 35% more sugar*!
*True, some of it is natural. Since many manufacturers do not break down how much of the sugar is naturally occuring vs. added sugar, I use this technique to estimate the added sugar. Find the flavored yogurt and the plain yogurt equivalent. The difference between the sugar level in the flavored yogurt and the plain yogurt is a good estimate of the added sugar.
Healthier Choices: An alternative to flavored yogurt has to be palatable, easy to eat and quick to grab on the go. Plain yogurt is a great choice, particularly with added fruit. An ounce of cheese (cheese stick or cheese cube) with an apple or berries. If your child craves the sweetness, cottage cheese and fruit may be a good substitute.
If plain yogurt is too sour, I often advise parents to add a small amount of honey - while this certainly would be added sugar, parents are unlikely to add as much sugar as the manufacturers do.
Nutrition Bars
There are so many different kinds of nutrition bars on the market now, it’s hard to know how to approach them.
Do you want a protein bar, a meal replacement bar, an energy bar, a granola bar or something else? There are bars available to lose weight and there are bars to gain weight. Bars that claim to be healthy meals and snacks abound.
With very few exceptions, they all have long lists of ingredients that are hard to pronounce, are ultra-processed and often have a big chunk of sugar in them.
Healthier Choices: An alternative to bars has to be ultra-portable and quick. A handful of nuts will provide a great source of protein to give lasting energy on the go. I am also a big fan of energy balls (requires preparation) and seaweed snacks.
I, too, have been guilty of using the energy bar for an on-the-go break-in-case-of-emergency energy snack. And I will continue to do so, but I definitely try to keep it out of the daily (or even weekly) rotation of snacks.
Pouches
I know, I know. Pouches are so easy and they have vegetables in them! And many kids love them! I often see a parent trying to instill healthy habits and increase fruits and vegetables with these pouches. But here’s the thing - they are baby food. They weren't intended to be given to a child. They are heavily processed and strained, so many of the benefits of the whole fruit go away. The fiber is pulverized. Instead of being digested slowly over the path of the entire digestive tract -- without all that fiber to slow it down, gets absorbed quickly. I think of these fruit pouches as being similar to fruit juice.
Also, we need to watch out for added sugars. But rember, the manufacturers know that you are looking out for added sugars, so they add it in sneaky ways - usually in the form of juice concentrates. Pear juice concentrate certainly sounds healthy, but it is usually a form of added sugar. Lemon juice concentrate and malted barley extract are two other forms of sugar often added to pouches.
Pouches have also been linked to cavities and tooth decay. If you must use the pouches, you can decrease this risk by squeezing it out and eating it using a spoon.
Healthier Choices: An alternative to pouches has to be portable and quick. I would advocate for whole fruit or vegetables as a great alternative. A banana can go anywhere! Applesauce is even preferable to pouches, as it is not as thin and smooth a puree (meaning the fiber is less broken down).
Conclusion
I understand that life is busy and that it isn't always easy to make the healthiest choices for your family. But I hope that this gives you some ideas of healthier snacks that you can feel good about feeding your kids.
Snacking can be a great opportunity to help you child increase their fruit and vegetable intake and develop a healthy relationship with food. Your child's food intake can vary significantly from day to day, depending on your child's age, physical activity and body weight. This is all expected. Younger children are particularly good at understanding when they are hungry and full, so I would encourage you to listen to their cues. If that means three snacks today and only one tomorrow, that's OK. is all part of developing a healthy relationship with food.
If you need more suggestions of healthy snack ideas, you can find more information at the weight loss for kids free resources tab and if you need more support, don't hesitate to reach out.
Thanks for reading! I hope this was helpful.
