Keep Kids' Snacks Tasty and Healthy

These days more than 95% of the adults and children in this country have at least one snack each day. Many common snack foods are high in salt, fat, sugar, and calories. If your children regularly make unhealthy snack choices, the effect on their health will be negative. That's the bad news, but the good news is that snacks can be good for your children if you teach them to make healthy choices.

Children often cannot eat enough at three meals a day to satisfy their hunger and provide all of the nutrients they need. Snacks can supplement the calories they get from meals and provide the other nutrients they need to grow and develop normally. The best way to ensure that your children snack wisely is to plan snacks as a part of the day's menu. Let your children choose from snacks they helped pick out from the store, such as fruits, vegetables, and low-fat crackers and low-fat cheeses. Avoid caloric, fat-filled, or salty snacks such as candy, chips, and soda. Offer snacks at regular times and do strive to limit snacks to these times only. If you offer a snack at midmorning and again at midafternoon—times I recommend—you'll be best able to control what your kids are eating and to make sure that they don't think of snacks as foods that are available to them all day long.

More on: Healthy Meals for Families

Excerpted from:

From Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents by Henry Legere, M.D. Copyright © 2004. Used by arrangement with The Perseus Books Group.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.