In a seminar titled “Snacking among children: essential or excessive?”, Dr. Jennifer Orlet Fischer described some of the problems associated with children’s snack recommendations. Prevailing wisdom from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the United States Department of Agriculture is that snacks are essential to children’s nutrition. There are even federally funded programs to pay for snacking, even though there is not a universal guideline for children’s snacking recommendations. There is currently very little data on young children and snacking. Dr. Fischer presented recently found data over the subject.
The first presented study’s aim was to qualitatively characterize low-income parents’ philosophy of child snacking. What she found seems to be a standard consensus: there is no consensus on what snacking is. Dr. Fischer’s data presented that parents’ idea of what snacking is varied widely. In almost all studies, snacking is self-reported, and so if ‘snacking’ means different things to participants than to researchers, how can accurate data be collected? In the broader scheme of nutrition education, this data insinuates that snacking recommendations cannot be properly followed because they are interpreted differently by different people.
Another interesting facet of the presentation was about the children actually doing the snacking. It was found that, while increasing portion size typically resulted in a child eating more, this was not always the case. A child’s temperament will change how they’re influenced by things such as visual cues. This means a child’s attitude may dictate their food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, satiety responsiveness, and more, all of which affect a child’s risk for obesity. This poses an interesting question. Does snacking cause obesity or does obesity cause snacking? While previous data suggests over-consumption of calories from snacks can lead to obesity, the data Dr. Fischer provided may suggest that obese children are just more susceptible to over-snacking. So we are left wondering, is over-snacking a cause of obesity or a symptom of obesity? Are snacking recommendations needed to help control obesity rates, or are children’s attitudes toward food and snacking more important?
From the seminar presented, we must now consider if universal snacking guidelines for children are even possible. Not only will standardized recommendations be interpreted differently by parents, but a child’s attitude towards snacking will change their snacking behaviors regardless of outside factors. Individual counseling is needed to properly integrate parent’s and children’s attitudes, but snacking needs to be addressed on a nation-wide scale. Can we create a universal guideline that will do no harm regardless of guardian or child attitude? The need is understood, but a practical solution is not easily found.