Talk to me about after school snacks

[DietCokeChipsAndMayo]

My children seem to be hungrier and hungrier every day after school and are eating more and more crap which obviously I don’t want
I’ve moved dinner time earlier which does seem to be helping but particularly the little 2 don’t really understand that food will be coming in an hour/hour and a half and you don’t need to fill up on lots of different things as soon as you get home
None of them like anything particularly ‘protein’y which is a problem as they seem to be mainlining carbs which obviously does next to nothing in keeping them going

What do you usually do for after school snacks?

Just to add- when she ate her tea I would have porridge or crumpets and then bed

Oh, and peanut butter…

Fruit - banana, apple or grapes usually.

@Orangejuicemarathoner

My DS(5) has -

Breakfast at 7.45, usually a glass of milk, half an apple or a handful of grapes with 5/6 cashew nuts. If I can get some full fat Greek yoghurt down him then great, but he’s not a breakfast person early in the day.

They’re only allowed fruit as snack at school at 10ish, so he has a mini Apple plus his free milk.

Lunch at 12ish, half a ham sandwich, a babybel, carrot sticks or baby sweetcorn, sometimes half a pack of the organic veggie stick crisps. Either yoghurt coated rice cakes or yoghurt coated raisins and a mamia flapjack bar.

3/3.30 after school snack of either 1 x piece of gluten free toast and 4/5 tablespoons of beans or 1 x piece of gf toast with peanut butter or 1 x piece of cheese on gf toast. I mention that it’s gf as it’s about half the bloody size of normal bread and triple the bastard price.

Then dinner is a child appropriate sized portion of chilli and rice/pasta with pesto and peas and other veg/chicken and veg/roast dinner etc at 7ish.

He walks. 2 miles a day to school and back, Tuesdays he does 45 minutes of gymnastics and Thursdays an hour of climbing. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he’ll either spend an hour running around the park or go for a walk/bike round for an hour. Until November, we might go for a swim/paddle in the lake.

At the weekends he has a 45 minute swimming lesson and we’ll do at least one 2-3 hour walk/hike up in the hills, 4-500ft elevation and around 3/4 miles.

We often talk about food in age appropriate ways - eg, yellow foods help our body to heal. Red food like tomatoes can help our heart stay strong. We talk about why it’s important to ‘eat thw rainbow’ and how some food makes our tongue happy but too much of it makes our bodies sad. We talk about protein and how his gymnastics instructors stay strong and build their muscles by eating good protein like chicken.

He’s tall for his age and skinny but strong and has good stamina. He sleeps well and is constantly on the move. He’s not an adventurous eater but is learning to like and enjoy new foods and has an acceptably healthyish diet. Do you really think I should only be offering celery sticks and cucumber slices, especially before a physical activity after a full day of school, when there are seven hours between lunch and dinner, or do you think a small serving of carbs + protein is ok?

its one of his 3 meals for him, isn't it. not a snack Other posters are talking about children who have 3 full meals AND a large snack, or even more than one

But you are overestimating his activity levels, I think, It isn't a lot. You seem to think it is

Cheese, frubes, mini pepperami, ham etc

Probably not the best but I don't want her snacking on bread, biscuits or crisps really,

Mine get a chocolate biscuit bar or cake. If mine had crumpets or something substantial they wouldn't eat their tea.

I think the fill up on celery comments are hilarious and see nothing wrong with crumpet, peanut butter, pitta bread, houmous, fruit etc as an after school snack if it’s appropriate to the child’s activity levels and rest of the diet.
What I wouldn’t give is the real rubbish- pepperami, fridge raider, cheese string type stuff. That is the ultra processed stuff not peanut butter, made with pure peanuts, for heavens sake.

Peanut butter on toast is the standard snack here. Often with a bit of marmite too.

Cold cereal. PB on rice cakes, oat cakes or crackers. Flapjack type bar.

I think it’s a decent amount of scheduled plus unscheduled activity for a 5 year old who seems to be pretty happy and healthy at the moment. I expect it to increase as he gets older and further develops likes and hobbies. I don’t believe in clubs five days a week after school, as, for us, it’s important we spend down time together and with extended family if possible.

I don’t think he is abnormal in our community in terms of physical activity, although potentially across the U.K. he does do slightly more I would guess, but I don’t think he’s pushed to any sort of extreme.

Snack a Jack with banana sliced on top, homemade seed fruit flapjack, crumpet, half a bagel, fruit bar go ahead things, crackers or breadstick and babybel or pepperoni. 3 nights of week it’s fruit or a yogurt as dinner is early for clubs. One night if it’s a play date night as someone else house he gets to eat all the crap then more crap!😟

Soreen bar/ granola bar/ fruit leather snack/ popcorn for the 20min walk home (uphill) from school. Both boys are as active as aloha above plus they have the pe and playtime in school. Both not very good at eating a full meal so I give them a snack when they come out.
They do junior Park run can easily hike a 10k in the peak district at the weekend.
One of the kids in my 5yo class was labelled obese by the bmi health check they do in foundation. He is a bit chunky, but he likes his food. His marathon running parents are mortified but he just looks like he has puppy fat to me.
Sometimes I give them a chocolate bar.

@Orangejuicemarathoner

peanut butter is an ultra highly processed food, and as such will be loaded with omega 6 which causes insulin resistance. Crumpets, made with highly processed white flour, are very little different to eating spoonfuls of pure sugar.

I agree, not intrinsically bad, but not every day, and not as a snack between meals!

I love crumpets and peanut butter, but I eat them knowing what I am eating, and compensating in other ways, during the day that I eat them

It should not be a regular go-to snack for children

No peanut butter needn't be a UPF. Some are, some aren't. There are plenty that are 100% peanuts, it just depends which ones you choose. There is no need to worry about omega 6 in food, if you avoid the cheap seed oils like sunflower etc, which is what upsets the omega 3/6 balance. Use almond butter if it bothers you but it's not essential.

Insisting that hungry children eat only celery is ridiculous.

I actually kind of agree on the carby bready snacks, but your crazy solution is alienating everyone. Protein and veg or fruit is ideal, in an amount that satiates but doesn't upset other meal plans. Perfectly doable.

Wow this thread is much more heated than I was expecting it to be 😂

Thankyou for all the suggestions, I pretty much do similar to most on here; cheese, crackers, cucumber/pepper/carrot sticks, cocktail sausages etc, maybe I just need to give them more to prevent them diving into the treat draw afterwards 🤔
Can’t move the meal time any more forwards or backwards as it’s sandwiches very tightly in between a club finishing and someone else’s starting

All this talk of insulin is making me laugh though, one of my children is type 1 diabetic so I am unfortunately more aware than most of carbs and their effect on the body and which foods contain them

Also never realised how popular crumpets are - none of mine like a crumpet

A cup of tea or hot chocolate and a few biscuits.

Thankyou for all the suggestions, I pretty much do similar to most on here; cheese, crackers, cucumber/pepper/carrot sticks, cocktail sausages etc, maybe I just need to give them more to prevent them diving into the treat draw afterwards 🤔

If they’re keen to get to the treats I’d be second guessing whether they are actually hungry or not. Wanting a snack or treat and feeling hungry are two different things. Hence my DS and I have conversations a long the lines of:
‘Mum, can I have one of those cupcakes, I’m hungry’
‘No, they’re for later after we’ve had our tea. You can have an apple if you’re hungry.’
‘No, never mind…’ sulks a bit. Goes another two hours without eating before dinner. The fruit was always there for the taking.

One thing I wouldn't give to children is processed meat like sausage (or indeed bacon, though less likely to turn up in a snack!), because it's a very well-documented carcinogen. I definitely don't expect everyone to be vegan like me! And certainly not to bring up kids on vegan diets, as I doubt that will ever become popular. But there's a wide gap between something relatively 'extreme' like avoiding all animal products, and a safety measure like steering clear of the most carcinogenic foods.

Of course, anything is okay as an occasional treat! But processed meat is something that truly can be harmful as part of the daily diet.

Piece of toast, small tortilla with peanut butter and half a banana rolled up and cut into pieces or a couple of cocktail sausages/mini scotch eggs/mini sausage rolls.

Fruit kebabs go down well- just grapes, strawbs, chunks of apple or banana cut into small round and pushed onto skewers. It helps for picky eaters too. My youngest nibling loves snack plates with a couple of crisps, some raisins, a bit of chocolate, a sausage or chicken goujon etc.

I sometimes just do apple slices with nut butter, or nb on toast soldiers.

Innocenta I do tend to fall back on cheese and processed meats as snacks for the diabetic one, which I know isn’t very good but I struggle with what else to give her that is carb free - obviously just veggies alone isn’t going to satisfy either her hunger or her tastebuds
I must make more of an effort to find alternatives- if anyone has any suggestions here I’d be very grateful

DS is 17 and still gets a crumpet when he gets in from college - not sure what he will do when he goes to university!

He also eats celery and cucumber with them. He's weird.

@minipie

Now I want a crumpet with peanut butter

But what about the omega 6

DD1 has only just started Reception so we're new to this but her snack is something like, homemade flapjack and a piece of fruit, crackers and cheese, piece of toast, an apple or a banana. If she's hungry before dinner which is at 5.30 she has a cup of whole milk.

@DietCokeChipsAndMayo Sorry that I came across as criticising you - I didn't mean it like that, but I see that what I wrote could have seemed personal. I was just sharing my thoughts, but of course everyone has to do what is best for their own family. I know with T1D in the picture that must make it much harder.

I really don't want to sound like a preachy vegan. I totally understand most families need to give their children meat and dairy.

Rosesareyellow that is a very good point and I think you might be right there, I’m going to investigate this - absolutely ban the treat draw after school and see how much they eat when healthier things are the only option, then I’ll have a better idea of how hungry they actually are
I think we developed some fairly lazy eating habits over all the lockdowns so I need to pull my finger out a bit now and just say no

Innocenta no I didn’t take it that way at all, you’re completely right about the processed meats and I just had a bit of an ‘oh god she does eat them every single day’ moment - I tend to think of what she eats only in relation to her diabetes and carbs/insulin, so she can eat as many fridge raiders and babybels as she likes as they’re ‘free’ in terms of carbs, but obviously they’re definitely not great for her in large quantities, and that’s on me, I’ve become reliant on things like that, I need to readdress that ASAP
I didn’t take it as preachy at all