Parents - your kids are bringing garbage snacks to school
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Anonymous
I understand basic nutrition. Part of that is understanding that my kid is generally underweight and needs calories. That's something that I've learned from parenting my child, doing research, and talking to her doctor. I understand this better than her teachers, which is why I don't need a lecture from one. |
Anonymous
Nobody said fat is unhealthy. But I will say that Doritos aren't healthier than pretzels. |
Anonymous
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My younger kid is a restrictive eater with diagnosed autism and sensory issues around food and is quite thin. I’m fine with him getting some extra calories from a bag of mini muffins or Teddy Grahams or whatever.
When I was a kid in the 90s, kids were bringing cans of soda to school for lunch and drinking the whole can of Coke or sprite or whatever. Then in the mid-late 90s it switched more to Snapple and iced teas especially with the wealthier kids. Kids have literally always eaten “junk food” and they don’t need to be as restrictive with their diets as a 40 year old mom who works a desk job. |
Anonymous
| Why are they snacking so much anyway? My 3rd and 4th graders, only eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No snacks. |
Anonymous
Because a food your child doesn't consume or only has a little of has no health value at all, even if it is "healthier" than an alternative they will finish. Chocolate milk and white milk have the same amount of calories, fat, vitamin D that a kid needs. But if I give my kid white milk, she might skip it altogether or just have a sip or two and decide she's done. So she misses out on most of the nutrients. If I give her chocolate milk, she will almost always drink the entire thing. Thus the chocolate milk is actually healthier, because it results in my kid getting all the underlying ingredients, than the option with no added sugar, which might be preferable in a vacuum but in reality will simply get thrown away. |
Anonymous
why they do that? Constipated? |
Anonymous
They just don’t need or want snacks. |
Anonymous
dp. Most pretzels are not healthy. |
Anonymous
Snacks are part of lunch. I can't send a five course meal. |
Anonymous
+1, the PP is approaching her child's snack like her child is a woman in her 40s trying to drop 15 lbs before swimsuit season. My kid needs calories, desperately. To be honest I'd prefer to send both items as a snack, because then she gets the calories in the muffins plus the fiber in the apple sauce, and it's even more calories. But schools don't like two-part snacks for some reason and if I have to choose, the muffins do a better job of meeting my kid's nutritional needs. I hate the preservatives (and packaging) in all the prepackaged stuff. Whenever I can, I choose options that don't have preservatives. But unfortunately these items tend not to travel as well and are not as visually appetizing as the prepackaged stuff. I still send my kid in with homemade muffins when I can, where I can control all the ingredients and even add stuff I know she needs like hemp hearts for protein or sneaking in fruit or veggies. But also the homemade muffin will come home half eaten (because it has less sugar and looks less appealing than the pre-packaged one). It is so bizarre how people in this thread seem to think that simply serving your child healthy food is the end of the conversation. I serve my kid healthy food every day. At home, if she refuses to eat her peas or won't eat her protein, I can point her to the fridge where she can replace it with an apple or a peanut butter sandwich. At school those options don't exist, I'm not there to reinforce healthy choices, and I really just need her to get some calories so she's not cranky. Sometimes that means sacrificing ideals around how processed foods are or added sugar. Oh well. That's life. |
Anonymous
And you'd be wrong, because "healthy" isn't a concept that exists in a vaccuum. Some kids need more fat in their diet because they don't naturally want to eat much. I have one like this, and I'd much rather see her eating Doritos than pretzels. She'd prefer the pretzels, but sometimes I push stuff like Doritos that would be less healthy for me, because her dietary needs are different. |
Anonymous
Well ALL Doritos are not healthy. |
Anonymous
So do you think that's why many kids are bringing whole sleeves of cookies for snack, or is your kid maybe an outlier? |
Anonymous
Neither has much nutritional value, their main purpose is in delivering some calories so a kid's blood sugar doesn't dip too much. Which is also usually the point of a mid-morning snack at school, it's just a bridge to lunch so kids aren't falling apart while they wait for their lunchtime. I don't send Doritos because I personally think they are gross and messy, it's not something I buy my kid. But when I send pretzels, I don't do so under some illusion they are healthier than Doritos. They are both "empty calories" in that they don't offer many other nutrients and aren't really providing the key things my kid really needs -- fat, protein, iron, vitamins. It's just a hit of carbs. But if it gets her to lunch without feeling famished, okay. I also don't sit around juding the parents who send Doritos, even though I don't like them. It's not my business. |
Anonymous
I think that I don't know why kids are bringing what they're bringing, so I keep my mouth shut. Teachers should do the same. |