Healthy snacks for teenagers

Rather than completely banning snacks, it is better to provide reasonable guidance, choose the right category, control the frequency, and find the right eating scene. Rather than turning all snacks into "monsters" across the board, it is much better for children's growth, development, and psychological state.

Last week I went to my cousin's house for dinner, and I happened to see her throwing half a bag of spicy strips found in her son's schoolbag, who was in the first grade of junior high school, into the trash. The mother and son were so upset that they couldn't even finish the meal. My cousin’s point of view is particularly representative: “Snacks are full of additives. Not only will you not grow taller, but you will also get acne easily if you eat them. You can’t touch them even if you take one bite. ”But when I turned around, the child complained to me, saying that the whole class would give out snacks during recess, but he could only watch from the side. Last week, he did not dare to accept the potato chips given to him on his classmates’ birthday, for fear that he would be scolded if they smelled it when he got home.

Interestingly, this happens to be an issue that has been debated in the nutrition community for several years: the traditional view of public nutrition has always been "if you can't eat it, don't eat it", which requires teenagers' daily energy supply from snacks to account for no more than 10% of the total energy throughout the day. Priority is given to unprocessed natural ingredients, preferably all original nuts, fresh fruits, and sugar-free dairy products. "The standard answer is”； However, the new child nutrition research in the past two years has put "psychological needs and social attributes" into the assessment dimension. The Dietary Guidelines for Teenagers updated last year by the Maternal and Child Nutrition Branch of the Chinese Nutrition Society also specifically mentioned that children should not be completely deprived of their right to eat "high-sugar and high-oil snacks". Occasionally eating small amounts can avoid retaliatory intake in adulthood caused by "sense of deprivation".

I have talked with several school nurses from public middle schools before. The popular science manuals they issue to parents no longer include "blacklist"-style bans. Instead, they recommend flexible gradient classification. The priority is to choose those natural ingredients that everyone knows. Eat them at the two times when you are prone to hunger, after the third class in the morning and before school in the afternoon. This will not affect the main meal, but also prevent low blood sugar from affecting the efficiency of listening to lectures - Oh, by the way, I met a third-year junior high school class before. The director said that several children in his class skipped breakfast in order to catch up with early reading and secretly ate crispy noodles during class. Later, they asked their parents to give their children a small handful of original almonds and half a box of sugar-free yogurt every day. After half a semester, many fewer people were distracted in class.

Don’t think that anything that claims to be a “healthy snack” is necessarily reliable. A while ago, I helped a relative look at the ingredient list for an internet-famous fruit and vegetable crisp. The first three ingredients were vegetable oil, white sugar, and maltodextrin. Calculated, the fat content is higher than that of ordinary potato chips. There are also children's cheese sticks that are very popular. The calcium-to-sodium ratio of many products is less than 1. To supplement the calcium with one stick, you have to add half of the sodium. If you eat two or three sticks a day, your sodium intake for the day will directly exceed one-third. There are also different voices here. Many merchants say that their fruit and vegetable crisps are freeze-dried and not fried. That is indeed no problem, but how can ordinary consumers tell the difference between low-temperature frying and freeze-drying? The most practical way is to look through the ingredient list. If the top three ingredients include white sugar, vegetable oil, and various incomprehensible additives, no matter how fancy they are, just put them in the "occasionally eaten" category.

My sister used to have a headache for more than half a year to control her second-grade girl's snacks. Later, she simply gave her a "snack free fund" of 10 yuan a week. She made an agreement with the child in advance. If the ingredient list exceeds three lines and cannot be understood, she can only buy it once a week. The rest of the money can be used to buy strawberries or original nuts. Now when the little girl goes to the canteen to buy things, she will take the initiative to read the ingredient list on the back of the package. She will also tell her classmates, "This gummy of yours has three kinds of sugar added, and it will give you a toothache if you eat it." On the contrary, she is more self-disciplined than before when she hid and ate it secretly.

Of course, this does not mean that we should completely let go. Every child's situation is different. If they have dental caries, allergic rhinitis, or are overweight, then those with high sugar and oil must be strictly controlled. A friend of mine who is a dentist said that there are a lot of junior high school students who come to get their teeth filled now, and eight out of ten of them are caused by drinking carbonated drinks and eating sticky fruity gummy candies every day. In this case, let alone social needs, the more serious thing is to take care of your health first.

There is no absolute perfect standard for healthy snacks. To put it bluntly, it is a matter of balance. Don’t treat snacks as something heinous, and don’t treat snacks as a hands-off shopkeeper who doesn’t care about anything. After all, who didn’t hide dry noodles and orange candies from the canteen in the desk drawer when they were in school? As long as you don’t go astray and occasionally eat “not-so-healthy” snacks, it doesn’t delay your growth, and it can leave some interesting little thoughts for adolescence, which is pretty good.