Healthy Snacks like Cheese and Vegetables Lower Caloric Intake and Fight Childhood Obesity

Compared to the one daily snack that children used to have 30 years ago, children these days have three rounds of snacks a day, a team of researchers from Cornell University found.  

According to researchers, children's habit of consuming too many unhealthy snacks per day is contributing to the rise in childhood obesity.

Offering highly nutrient-dense snacks like cheese or vegetables can help children lower their caloric intake while snacking, eliminating the risks of putting on unnecessary weight, researchers say.

Researchers Dr. Brian Wansink, Dr. Mitsuru Shimizu and Adam Brumberg found that cutting down snacking rounds affected children's healthy eating habits and encouraged them to eat more healthy snacks.

For the study, researchers included more than 200 school children. The participants were given different snacks like chips, vegetables, cheese or a combination of vegetables and cheese, while watching cartoons after school.

Satiety levels of the children were recorded before the experiment and after watching the cartoon. At the end of the study, children who had taken a combination of vegetables and cheese achieved satiety with fewer calories compared to children who took potato chips.

"Snack combos are fun to eat, and they take longer to eat than potato chips. This is why kids find them satisfying and why they eat so much less," said Wansink, in a news release.

Overweight children were found benefiting more from this kind of healthy snacking, by consuming 76 percent fewer calories. The findings come at a time when nearly 12.5 million young children and teens are affected by obesity problems in the United States. 

"There is no magic food or ingredient that will end childhood obesity, but learning to substitute certain foods-such as choosing a combination snack of vegetables and cheese instead of potato chips or sweets-can be an effective tool to induce children to reduce their caloric intake while snacking," Wansink said. "What's cool is this worked best for the heaviest, pickiest kids. Its fun to eat and it makes snack time last longer."

Following are some recommendations from the authors to keep children healthy:

* Do not eliminate snacking fully

* Replace unhealthy snacks like potato chips with healthier options like vegetables and cheese

* Provide variety and include different kinds of fruits and vegetables

* Teach children to stop eating when they feel full

The study is published online in the journal Pediatrics.