After School Snacks

Hi, I’m Jo Lenz and I’m a pediatric or children’s dietician, and I’m going to be sharing my top tips to help with any issues you may be facing with your baby or your child’s eating. So after school snacks can be really difficult when your children come home from school and they’re absolutely starving. I know mine always do. I think what you’ve got to remember is sometimes when they’ve had their lunch around 12, by the time they finished school, especially if they’ve done PE in the afternoon, or they’ve been to an afterschool clubs, it’s even later that they’re getting home, they come feel really hungry, but you obviously, as a parent, you don’t want to fill them up on snacks before their evening meal or their dinner. So it can be a really tricky situation.

What would be a healthy snack to give? So what I always sort of help parents with is perhaps thinking about the timings of meals. And could you bring that evening meal forward a little bit to eat a bit earlier. You could give them a small snack on the way home from school, but then ultimately they’re sort of. They know that they’re going to sit down for dinner later on if they’ve had a hot meal at school. 

I would also consider whether they actually need another meal in the evening or whether a smaller snack type meal would be okay. It’s something on toast or a jacket potato, or just a sandwich. I think some parents get quite stressed by the fact that they have to provide another meal in the evening, but actually it’s not always the case.

So there are lots of different options that you could try for an afterschool snack. Oversee fruit and vegetables would be top there. If you can get your little one to have some vegetables with some hummus, that would be great; breadsticks, crackers, oat bars. So keeping the sugar content low, if you can. If they’ve been doing some P they might need something a little bit more substantial, several hot cross bun or something on toast, and then you could consider just bringing that evening meal forward a little bit, and that can all help.