Snack-Bar Temptations Derailing Kids' Diets

For many middle school students, having daily access to snack bars that offer little more than pizza and fries is a temptation too great to resist, say CNRC researchers.

"It's unrealistic to expect middle-school children to exercise that kind of will-power," said Dr. Karen Cullen, a CNRC behavioral nutrition researcher and assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. "Kids, just like adults, prefer the taste of sweets and fat. Knowing how to balance highly desirable but low-nutrition foods with more healthy ones is learned and takes maturity." 

Cullen followed 594 fourth and fifth graders over a 2-year period for a study designed to learn how gaining access to snack bars affects children's diets. She found that after transitioning to middle school, students' lunch-time consumption of healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and milk dropped by one-third or more. At the same time, she found they were eating 68 percent more fatty vegetables like French fries and chips and 62 percent more sweetened beverages like soda and sweetened teas.

"If we'd found the students eating just an occasional snack-bar meal of chips and a sweetened beverage we wouldn't be so concerned," she said. "But in fact, more than one-third of our middle-schoolers reported eating exclusively at the snack bar during the 2-year study, where the top-selling foods were pizza, chips, soda, French fries, candy and ice cream; the only vegetable in sight was a pickle and the closest thing to fruit was fruit-flavored candy."

Although the study results are a wake-up call, Cullen encourages schools, and parents, to resist the temptation to ban snack bars altogether.

"The problems we found with snack bars simply reinforce the need to make quick, good-tasting, easy-to-eat healthy choices available to children, both in school and at home," Cullen said. "There are ways to make healthy choices appealing to children,"

For example, she suggests offering colorful cut-up fruit in see-through plastic cups or in fruit-and-yogurt parfaits and carrot sticks with a low-fat dip.  

"Retooling snack bars will take effort, but it really is a golden opportunity to improve the school eating environment in ways that encourage kids to make healthy eating decisions," she said. 

Source: Karen Weber Cullen, DrPH, RD, LD and Issa Zakeri, PhD.   Fruits, Vegetables, Milk, and Sweetened Beverages Consumption and Access to à la Carte/Snack Bar Meals at School. American Journal of Public Health, 2004; Vol 94, No. 3  pp. 463-467. Abstract