Nowadays, you cannot go 20 feet without being confronted with a display of candy, chips, pretzels, etc., positioned exactly at kid height. Snacks are served at EVERY social function; my children would start salivating on their way to Sunday school because they knew their good behavior would be rewarded with copious amounts of Goldfish crackers (thus eliminating any chance that they would eat lunch after church).

I think we had snack time in kindergarten, when we were given two graham crackers and a Dixie cup of Kool-Aid, but now even my third-grader gets snack time — an hour before lunch, no less, with the predictable result that she never eats her sandwich and apple!

I attend a ladies’ Bible study that starts at 9:30. Every week, someone is assigned to bring a snack. “A snack?” I groaned. “Why on earth do full-grown adult women, most of whom are trying to lose 10 lbs on any given day, require a snack two hours after breakfast?” Indeed. And everyone seems to try to outdo each other with the scones, the muffins, the coffeecakes, etc.. It’s fairly obvious why some of us have so much trouble losing weight.

I don’t generally pack snacks for my kids when we go out, unless we are going to be out, say, at the beach for five hours. Even then, I pack minimal food, because I’ve noticed that picky eating is in direct proportion to how many snack items they have ingested during the afternoon.

It drives me nuts when we go to the playground, and other moms start pulling out giant sacks of chips, crackers, cookies, fruit roll-ups, etc., and then my kids stop playing and ask me plaintively what did WE bring. “Nothing…you just had lunch thirty minutes ago!” Then they go and give the puppy-dog eyes to anyone with a crinkly package. Everyone is glaring at me like I’m some sort of child-starving monster, and I’m growing increasingly annoyed with everyone for making what should be an opportunity for fresh and and exercise into an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I totally think the No S guy is right on with this. Check out the rest of his site; he has some great “duh!” solutions to things like slothfulness, drunkeness, and gluttony!

SteveG wrote:
I find that I can substitute fruit as a dessert at least a couple of times a week, but with three kids under 7, the idea of an entirely sweetless dinner 6 days a week is a hard sell at this point…
I want to mention, for Jennifer and anyone else whose kids are young enough that the family habit might be more easily changed, that one of the best food-related things my parents did for me was to present “dessert” as a separate mini-meal served an hour or two after dinner. Typically it was something sort of sweet and sort of healthy, like fruit cobbler, oatmeal cookies, or yogurt with jam. Not only did I develop a taste for that kind of “dessert” rather than a sugar wallop, but I learned to fill up on healthy dinner without saving space for dessert.

People concerned that eliminating Snacks would mean eating too infrequently: Consider scheduling more than 3 meals. Plan what to eat for your extra meal(s), and sit down to eat it mindfully. For some people, eating more often (but the same amount of total food) speeds up the metabolism.

My daughter is 6 feet tall. You surely know how hard it is to be 16 and labeled a GIANT by everyone at school. Poor thing. I tell her that someday she’ll love it, but for now (and for the past few years) it’s a little hard to take.

Dean in Wisconsin