Nibble on this

Back-to-school snack recipes and tips that encourage healthy eating habits

The new school year not only means a new routine for kids, it’s also an organizational shift for adults — an opportunity to rethink ingrained habits and foster more healthful ones.

And snacks are a great place to start. School-age children get about a third of their daily calories from snacks, making between-meal eating as important for nourishment as breakfast, lunch or dinner. With these strategies and snack recipes, you’ll have ample tools to put yourself and the kids in your life on the best possible track.

TAKE A WIDE-ANGLE VIEW: An allor-nothing approach to eating is a trap at any age, but it can really backfire when it comes to getting kids to eat well. Highly restrictive approaches and pressure typically glorify the forbidden. The helpful reality is that a healthful diet has a lot of flexibility: If you are mostly eating minimally processed foods, including plenty of vegetables and fruits, a bag of chips or gummy worms now and then, or a cookie isn’t going to wreck the day. Rather than stress over one snack or ingredient, present an array of healthful options.

GET KIDS INVOLVED: One way to foster a genuine enjoyment of nourishing foods is to give kids a say in planning the week’s snacks. At the market, have them select the fruits and vegetables; let them choose between cheese or yogurt. Give kids a preapproved list of recipes, such as the Apple Ring Treats and Big Dippers, which let kids put their stamp on snacks. Decisions about a bag of chips versus a sweet can be part of it, too, without letting those foods dominate.

ENCOURAGE EXPLORATION: One way to get kids jazzed about food is to approach it with the wonder of an explorer. Lead them to notice the color, shape, aroma, texture and temperature. When they choose a snack, encourage them to consider a variety of colors and textures — something creamy, something crunchy, something juicy — and see what they come up with. This familiarizes children with a variety of foods and makes it more likely for them to enjoy a wider selection of healthful options in the long run.

MAKE HEALTHY THE EASY

OPTION: When we are hungry and busy, we impulsively reach for the easiest option. Prepping snacks ahead makes grabbing something fresh and healthful ultraconvenient, so that becomes the default.

CONSIDER THE TIMING: Try to avoid the trap of the whole afternoon becoming one extended snack-fest or eating too close to dinnertime. Establish a routine where your child eats their snack soon after coming home from school and then waits until dinner is ready. If my daughter nagged, she was “starving” right before dinner, I’d offer her some of the vegetables I was cutting for that meal, which usually helped tide her over just enough.

BE A ROLE MODEL: Encouraging children to snack on fruits and vegetables when you are on your third energy bar of the day is a disconnect they internalize, so model the eating habits you’d like to see them have.