Lindsey, a regular Lunch Tray reader and commenter, says her child was recently served this array of foods as a snack at a summer art program:
Lindsey writes:
My daughter was on such a sugar high! I will most likely not send her again. To her credit, she did tell me what she had, and understood that the rest of the day’s food would only include fruits, veggies and protein. That said, I wanted to be the one to treat her to ice cream on a hot summer day – they took that away from me!
That’s one of my biggest complaints, too. I love sharing sweet treats with my children but am sometimes reluctant to do so when they’ve already been fed so much junk by other people during the course of the day. The problem is, each feeder-of-snacks regards its own subpar offerings as no big deal (and they’re not, in a vacuum) but when viewed against a child’s entire diet for a week, all this junk really starts to add up.
Do you have a photo (or description) of an egregious snack that’s been fed to your child at school, camp, a team sports event or elsewhere? Send it to me using the Contact tab above and I’ll post it on a future Kids’ Snack Hall of Shame.
mara says
probably the worst offender is the little bowling club my kids have done that come with snack and drink included. So kids can pick any soda, hi C or water (how many really choose that?) and a snack of their choice. They have all the standard choice of chips, goldfish packs, teddy grahams, cookie packs and even candy. But to me the worst are the big hostess cupcakes, packages of 6 donuts, huge processed chocolate muffins and honey buns. All loaded with probably a full day’s worth of sugar and fat. Add a dr. pepper or sprite on to that and we are talking sugarpalooza. I’m there so I have to be the bad cop and tell them which snacks are off limits. Would be so much easier if they just weren’t a choice!
bettina elias siegel says
Take a picture! 🙂
NotCinderell says
At the farewell presentation for my son’s summer camp today: a table with sugar wafers (the kind with the 3 layers of waffle-type cookies with frosting sandwiched between), chips, pretzels, Twizzlers, Mike & Ike and juice. There was absolutely no effort by any of the adults to moderate the consumption, and plenty of kids got really greedy. My son got a handful of chips, about 6 Mike & Ikes, 1 Twizzler, 1 sugar wafer, and a cup of juice. He ate less than half of what most of the kids were getting. Plus they sent him home with a goodie bag with Laffy Taffys and more potato chips. Oh, yeah, and he’s not quite 4 years old. The kids ranged in age from 3-9 or so.
I would be less of a stick in the mud about this if they pre-portioned the stuff so that everyone got a reasonable amount. Making a junk food buffet and then releasing a bunch of kids on it in a feeding frenzy is not the way to go.