“Generation Snack”
This NYT summary of a recent study doesn’t paint a very pretty picture of kids’ snacking habits:
A sweeping study of 31,337 children and adolescents released on Tuesday tracked snacking and meal trends from 1977 through 2006 using data from four national surveys. On average, children reach for cookies, chips and other treats about three times a day, consuming nearly 600 daily calories from snacks. That’s an increase of 168 snack calories compared with what children ate in the late 1970s.
…Overall, snacking now accounts for about 27 percent of an average child’s total daily calories.
Desserts like cookies and cakes remain the main source of snacking. Salty snacks like chips and pretzels have posted the biggest gains and are the second largest snack category. Candy and fruit drinks are also popular. One notable trend is that in the past few decades, fruit drinks have replaced whole fruit as a snack.
The fact that kids are getting fatter isn’t news, of course. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see some numbers and comparisons over time. While the increase in daily calorie intake (+113) doesn’t seem all that large, it’s more serious when you combine it with less physical activity. More cals coming in + fewer being burned = fatter kids.
March 4, 2010
“Generation Snack” – http://blog.ultimatefatburner.com/2010/0…
March 5, 2010
It seems like the dietary news we hear about children just keeps getting worse. It is a severe problem that seems to not have a fix.
Parental guideance seems to be an issue. I was in the grocery store the other day, in the produce section. A young mother with a son about 6 or 7 years old was there.
She told her son to pick out a fruit for breakfast (probably didn’t take time for a good breakfast) before he went to school. He didn’t want a fruit and insisted he would not eat one. The mother insisted for about 30 seconds. Then caved and they headed off to the snack isle.
That is a problem. I was always given a choice in food growing up. The choice is you eat what we have or you go hungry. I didn’t have to go hungry to many times before I made the smart choice.
IMHO that’s what should have happened in this case. Choose a fruit or go hungry.