I don’t remember a whole lot about my childhood, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t eating all the time. These days it seems like all kids do is snack and parents are constantly being hit up to provide food for this soccer practice or that scout meeting.
All food, all the time
When I was growing up, there were vending machines at my high school, and I think probably my junior high, too. There was easy access to junk food and it was pretty easy to make poor choices in the cafeteria as well (see my senior year, in which I subsisted, when I wasn’t eating bagels with peanut butter brought from home, on buttered rolls and chocolate milk for lunch), but these days there’s that along with the idea that just about every activity — even short ones — needs to come with a snack.
The United States Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have researched the issue of snacking and found that, between 1977 and 2002, the number of people snacking three or more times a day increased from 11 percent to 42 percent.
At the same time, the number of kids reporting they ate three meals a day went down, but the number of kids who’d had a snack the previous day increased more than 40 percent.
Parents and health experts alike say the availability of food everywhere, all the time has gotten out of hand and it’s difficult for parent to rein in their kids’ snacking tendencies. Some parents see the convenience of snacking as a great way to get their kids some food on the go, while others worry that the choices other parents make when they provide snacks for group events undermines their efforts to teach their own kids about healthy eating and the importance of getting three healthy meals a day.
Food marketers aim to ease parental guilt
The amount of money being spent on snacks has skyrocketed — from an already hefty $60 billion in 2004 to more than $68 billion in 2008. The biggest growth category in snacking? One hundred calorie packs, which are popular with parents both for their own on-the-go snacking and as a way to control portions their kids are eating of the less-healthy stuff.
And more fast food companies are selling smaller versions of their food to accommodate the snacking crowd and bring in more revenue as people are eating out less.
Lots of parents use snacking as a way to calm or stave off tantrums in their kids, giving them more calories than they need. And these calories are often consumed in the car on the way to another activity, meaning they don’t always have an opportunity to burn those calories off, either.
Still, Ellyn Satter, a dietitian and family therapist, told the New York Times that some snacking shouldn’t be seen as a big deal, as long as those snacks have at least a little nutritional value. Kids are pretty good at self-regulation on the quantity of foods they eat, she said; parents still need to regulate when, where and what their kids are eating.
(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)
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