Snacks can form an important part of overall nutrition intake in early childhood which lays the foundation for growth, learning, and physical and mental well-being.... between snacks and main meals it can feel like a lot of food to plan and prepare in one day! This can make preparing and choosing snacks for your child feel overwhelming, especially with so many options on the supermarket shelves.
The good news is, that snacks don’t need to be complicated or stressful, and they can still be balanced and nutritious.
Rapidly growing, toddlers require more nutrients in each mouthful of food than adults to meet their overall energy requirements. To meet these increased nutrition demands, from one year of age, most children will begin to need snacks throughout the day. Snacks at regular times throughout the day can help fuel your child’s body and brain with the energy they need.
As a general guide, three meals and two planned snacks per day are enough for most healthy toddlers. As children grow beyond toddlerhood snacks continue to help children manage their hunger between meals and meet their nutrition requirements. There are several key points to remember with kids' snacks:
Have routine snack times as much as possible; for example, morning tea and afternoon tea are spaced between and away from main meals.
Limit all-day grazing.
As the parent you choose what and when snacks are served; snacks ideally are best served sitting and with no distractions
Meals and 'snacks' can have the same foods, and include whole foods, not all snacks need to come from a packet.
Avoid highly processed snacks as much as possible
So that being said, snacks are an opportunity to provide nutrition to your child, and a chance to give more exposure to a variety of foods, the more colourful the better.
Pro tip: I always like to serve a fruit and/or vegetable, with some fat and protein to keep kids full until the next meal.
Fruit
Keep it simple and offer a variety of fruits at snack time, some of my favourite ways to serve fruit are:
Fruit platter with cheese sticks or cheese slices
Banana rounds topped with peanut butter
Fresh fruit and full-fat Greek yoghurt
Thin apple slices and cheddar cheese
Ricotta cheese spread on crackers with strawberries
Banana and chia seed pudding
Rice cakes, peanut butter and sliced banana
Vegetables
The more kids see vegetables throughout the day the more likely they are to accept and eat vegetables. Serving vegetables as part of a snack can take the pressure off at main meals and help children meet their nutrition requirements. Current data shows that just 5% of Australian children are consuming the recommended serving of vegetables each day.
Some of my favourite ways to serve vegetables are:
Vegetable sticks (can be steamed or soft vegetables) and cheese (*hard vegetables can be a choking risk for young children)
Black beans and avocado slices
Hummus or vegetable dips with crackers
Zucchini and cheese muffins
Grated carrot, grated cheese and sultanas
Scone topped with mashed avocado
Be sure to modify any foods to suit your child's age and stage of feeding development.
Up next are my favourite On-The-Go (packet) snacks.
x Anna
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