My Child Won’t Eat Anything But Junk Food: How to Deal With Snacks
Snacks sometimes get a bad wrap, don’t they?
When you think of snacks for kids, what typically comes to mind?
Just hearing this word often conjures up images of the cracker aisle at Target, where you can find all things crunchy cheesy galore, alongside every salty and sweet combination imaginable.
For many parents, snacks usually resemble packaged food of some sort that seem to be a magnet for kids. Maybe it’s the colorful packaging, the crackling noise of ripping into a bag of something yummy, or simply, the taste of whatever deliciousness might be inside.
If your children are anything like mine, I know you might have kids on your hand who LOVE to snack.
And maybe you’re finding this becoming more of an issue in your home. You might have a child who prefers snacking over eating regular meals. Or who is constantly asking for snacks, perhaps? Or maybe your child prefers actual snack type foods or is eating very little of a meal and asking for a snack immediately after?
If you nodded your head in agreement to any of these things, I want you to know you’re definitely not alone!
Snack foods and snacking in general can bring up power struggles between parents in kids.
On one hand, they’re easy foods to pass out to our kids, especially when on the go or in a rush. On the other hand, you might be worried about your child showing a high preference for foods that may be nutritionally unequal to other foods, like fruits and vegetables.
Whatever you stance on snacks is or what your current situation might be in your home, I want to guide you toward making peace with snacks. This doesn’t have to be an area you battle with your child anymore. It’s possible to approach snacks in a way that doesn’t feel chaotic or like a battle you can never win.
Before we talk about some strategies to help you approach snacks in your home, let’s first look at snacking in general.
Why do you kids tend to gravitate towards snack foods, or why might they prefer a snack over an actual meal?
Why Your Child Only Wants to Eat Snacks
First, let’s look at some of the common snack foods kids love to eat: goldfish crackers, chips, cookies, pretzels, etc. You get the picture.
Why is it that kids tend to gravitate toward these foods in the first place?
To help you understand this, think about a time when you picked up a pint of fresh strawberries or blueberries from the store.
Have you ever dug in to enjoy your fresh berries, only to taste one that was sour or bitter? Sometimes, the flavor of berries can be inconsistent from one to the next, even in the same pint. Quite frankly, the flavors of many berries can be somewhat different and well, unreliable. It’s like you’re not really sure what you’re going to get in any given bunch you buy.
Now, when you think about snack foods in comparison, there’s a lot LESS inconsistency, right? I mean, think about those cheesy goldfish crackers your kids love to eat. I know from firsthand experience that goldfish crackers reliably taste like goldfish crackers every time I eat them.
For kids who are just learning to eat and who may have a harder time with more complex flavors and textures, having reliability with their food is actually important for feeling safe and good about eating.
A majority of snack foods, especially the packaged ones, are often easier to eat and have a more reliable taste, unlike other foods your child may be learning to eat.
Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be offering our children a variety of foods or stop offering them things that may be harder for them to eat. I just want you to step back and see why your child may be gravitating toward snack foods in the first place.
Sometimes, we beat ourselves up as parents or feel guilty about the foods our children prefer to eat or are gravitating toward, but that says nothing about their health or wellness, or even your job as a parent.
Kids love snack foods because they have a reliable taste and easier texture. They are enjoyable and these types of foods are something more likely to feel safer with eating
Another aspect about snacking is that it may feel like much less pressure for your child to eat, which again, feels safer.
Our kids are naturally going to lean into and prefer experiences that feel more comfortable and safe. And when we think about mealtimes versus snack times for kids, it’s easy to observe some major potential differences.
Meals can sometimes be more formal than snacking and feel more overwhelming for a child, too.
There’s often a higher volume of food involved at mealtimes, including a variety of foods your child may be uncomfortable with or learning how to eat. If there’s any added pressure for your child to eat certain foods, this may make them feel more anxious at the table, too. All of these factors can potentially create negative associations around mealtimes.
On the other hand, snacking often feels like a lot less pressure, which can feel more comfortable for kids. Children may associate snacking as a time to eat more preferred foods and to eat in a manner that feels a lot less stressful.
Again, this is not to say that we shouldn’t continue having meals with our children, but rather, to help you understand some of the factors involved that may elevate snacking or make it more desirable for children.
When we look at snacking through our children’s point of view, it’s easier to understand why your kids may gravitate toward snacking and snack type foods.
We’re going to dive into some strategies to help you approach snacking with your children in a healthy and supportive way, but first, let’s address a couple other things.
Why Snacking is Appropriate for Kids
It’s also important to understand that snacking is appropriate for kids. Because children are growing and developing, it’s necessary for them to have eating times between meals with intentional snack times.
Sometimes, as adults, it's easy to assume our kids can get from one meal to the next without having a snack. However, not having intentional snack times between meals and leaving a child hangry or constantly asking for snacks between meals.
It’s also important to distinguish between snacking and grazing.
Sometimes as parents, we assume snacking means allowing our children to graze and eat whatever they want from the pantry all day long. But this is not a supportive way for approaching snacks either.
When approaching snacking with our children, it requires redefining what snacking means to help create a support environment for our kids to learn how to eat a variety of foods.
Think about snacking as just another eating opportunity for your child or like a mini-meal. It’s a time to take a break to sit down and nourish your body. This is a healthy and supportive approach to snacking for adults, too!
Making Peace With Snack Foods
The first step toward helping our children building a healthy relationship with all foods and taking a more positive approach to snacking is to shift our own mindset around eating. Making peace with snack foods and the fact that kids need to be having snacks can make it easier to implement the approaches they need to feel more positive about eating.
Sometimes, this requires us to set aside our own hidden agendas about how and what our children eat.
This means letting go of any expectations we have and focusing on the things that are within our realm of control: Doing our parts with feeding and trusting our kids to do their jobs with eating. This is the foundation of a trusting feeding relationship we’re developing with our children and key to supporting them in building a positive relationship with all foods.
And remember, snacks are part of this.
Making peace with snack foods means accepting that all foods can fit into your family, and approaching food from an emotionally equal place can support you in raising intuitive eaters.
So we’ve looked at why snacking is appropriate for children, why kids may gravitate towards snacking and the importance of making peace with snack foods.
Now let’s look at some specific strategies that can help you approach snacks with your children in a positive way.
Strategies for Approaching Snacks With Your Kids
Creating intentional snack times:
First, it’s important to look at how you’re currently approaching snacks in your homes and strategic ways you can approach snacks to make them better for you and your kids.
In order to do that, we need to think about creating an actual snack time. Snacking often falls to the wayside and for good reason!
Feeding kids multiple times a day is HARD. It’s a lot to think about meals alone for our families, and creating snacks can feel like added stress and pressure.
But again, if you can approach this from a place of intentionality for feeding your family - not just your family but yourself too, this can help you approach snack times as intentional times for eating.
The main thing to remember is that this doesn’t have to be a big ordeal like meals often are. It can be as simple as putting together 2-3 food items that you already have ready to go from your fridge and pantry, putting them on a plate and setting them on the table for you and your kids to enjoy.
If we consistently put all the emphasis and effort into meals but don’t treat snack times as another equally important eating opportunity for our kids, there’s more likely to be chaos around food in the home.
Make it as part of your family routine and schedule, and take an intentional break away from distractions and screens to feed your bodies.
It doesn’t have to be rigid or set in stone. Having regular snack times creates official eating times, which means you can “close the kitchen” between snacks and meals. You know your children are going to have regular opportunities to eat throughout the day, and you can trust them to eat what they need at any given meal or snack time.
Having these boundaries around meals and snacks helps them better self-regulate throughout the day, prevents grazing. This means your child is less likely to have an appetite for meals/snacks, and also saves your sanity because you can always defer to the next meal or snack time when those requests for snacks come up.
Consider offering food family style to help decrease pressure around food and to support your child in self-regulation. For more on the benefits of family style meals, be sure to check out this post here: “How Family Style Dining Makes Feeding Kids Easier at Mealtime”
Build a better snack plate for staying power:
Again, we want to think of all eating times as an opportunity for your child to engage with food, learn to eat, and meet nutrition needs. This includes snack times.
Sometimes, we form a hierarchy in our minds about eating times and elevate meals above snacks, in terms of feeding our kids. But if we approach them equally, it can help reframe snacks as an equally important time for our kids to nourish their bodies and learn to eat.
Don’t give more power to meals over snacks. Snacks can be a great time for kids to eat too and are often easier for them because it feels like less pressure than mealtimes.
When it comes to serving snacks, I encourage parents to think about building your snack plate around the 3 P’s: Protein, Produce, and some kind of packaged snack that your child is really into.
This could be anything from crackers to chips or cookies, anything that we tend to think of when it comes to snacks.
We want to serve and offer it alongside other foods for 3 main reasons:
1) When your child sees their favorite snack foods served alongside other foods, it can help neutralize the snack food itself, which is often elevated above other foods.
2) This can also support them in boosting their nutrition with their snack. Added protein, fiber and fat can provide more of a nutritional punch than a packaged food alone, which can help sustain their satiety and energy levels between eating times, and
3) You’re presenting foods your child is learning to eat (like some produce or protein foods) alongside other foods your child is already familiar with and more comfortable eating (snack type foods).
The key here is to offer and provide without pressuring your child to eat certain foods. Make it available but don’t pressure your child to eat to support a more positive eating experience.
Consider unwrapping the packaged snack food and putting it directly on the plate, as this can help your child better self-regulate at the eating time.
Lastly, if your child is really hung up on a few packaged snack options or if you have older children who are more involved with their snack preparations, consider offering them a choice between two packaged snack options. So for example, you might decide on offering apple slices with peanut butter and allow your child to decide between popcorn or pretzels to go with that snack.
How to Talk About Snacks:
Another thing important to consider here is how you talk about snacks, snacking and snack foods.
When we categorize these foods, it naturally forms a hierarchy in a child’s mind about them, often elevating snack foods over other foods.
So instead of labeling the foods your child may normally gravitate toward for snacks, consider calling them what they are: crackers, cookies, chips, veggie straws, etc. Along the same lines, consider reframing how you talk about snack times, too.
When kids hear “snack time”, they can begin to associate this term with eating certain foods, like their favorite snack foods. And while this isn’t inherently a bad thing, it can contribute to creating a hierarchy of foods in a child’s mind.
Instead, we want to think about all eating times, whether snacks or meals, as equal opportunities for eating a variety of foods. So rather than referring to “snack time”, consider calling it an eating time.
Or when speaking with your child, you can reference something along the lines of “when it’s time to eat”. This won’t elevate a snack over a meal in a child’s mind.
The last part here with language is to be aware of your own words to your child when your child is eating. It’s easy to want to micromanage how and what kids are eating.
Saying things like, “Don’t eat too much of that junk!” can slip out with good intention. However, messages like this can make it harder for a child to learn how to self-regulate and to enjoy a variety of foods.
We want our children to learn how to trust their bodies without any messages that might communicate otherwise. Refraining from using language like “good” versus “bad” is also key for taking a more neutral relationship with food.
Switching up eating exposures:
If there are foods your child is persistently asking for, this may be indicative that your child needs more exposure to these foods or that they might need to see them at other times.
Consider integrating snacks foods your child is showing a higher interest in at other eating times, like with lunch, dinner or even breakfast.
Sometimes, we form rules around foods unconsciously, and this plays into how we feed our children.
But there’s no rules saying you can’t have chips with breakfast or cheetos with lunch. It may seem odd, but again, when we can break food rules in our home, it supports our children to learn about eating in absence of a hierarchy.
Allowing your child to have their favorite snack foods alongside other foods they’re used to having or seeing can support them in eating a variety of foods. When kids are seeing their favorite snack foods more frequently, it also helps decrease any anxiety they might have about those foods.
The important thing is to offer their favorite snack foods with meals without any stipulations attached.
Meaning, if you’re offering pirate booty with lunch for your child, don’t require your child to take a bite of certain foods or eat a specific amount of food before being allowed to eat the pirate booty. This might feel like a counterintuitive approach when a child shows a high interest in food.
The tendency is to want to limit or restrict these foods; however, research shows that a more controlling approach to sweets makes those foods more desirable for children.
Legalizing these foods and making them accessible within the context of your child’s eating times can help them better self-regulate.
Allow times for a higher quantity:
Lastly, one last strategy you may want to consider is offering a higher quantity of the favorite snack foods your child is repeatedly asking for.
As parents, we tend to underestimate the amount of food our children may need to eat to feel satisfied, and this is no different with snack foods.
When kids aren’t able to eat a quantity of their favorite foods that feel satisfying, it only leaves them wanting more. If you suspect this may be the case with your child, consider offering a snack opportunity where you child is allowed to eat more of an unlimited quantity.
For example, you can put out a bowl of chips as part of your child’s snack alongside other foods of your choosing and allow your child to eat the desired amount from what you’ve offered. Including intentional snacks like this can support your child in trusting what they need is available to them, which can decrease the anxiety around this food.
My Child Doesn’t Eat Dinner But Wants a Snack
Here’s another common question I get: “My child doesn’t eat anything at meals but wants a snack afterward. What should I do?”
What if a child doesn’t want a meal and asks for a snack soon after the meal has started?
If this is a recurring issue, there are a couple key things to look at:
Is mealtime feeling safe for the child?
Any sources of anxiety/stress around meals can shut down a child's appetite or desire to eat. Anxiety triggers the stress response in the body, which can decrease appetite.
Sources of anxiety or stress at mealtimes may involve a child feeling pressured to eat, not having access to safe/accepted foods, or dealing with conflict at mealtimes.
If a child is experiencing this, they likely won’t show any interest in eating at the mealtime. After they leave the table and stress response decreases, kids often realize they’re hungry again and often gravitate toward eating something safe, which for many kids, corresponds to a snack of some sort.
To help prevent this, focus on keeping mealtimes safe for your child to create a supportive eating environment. You can do this by refraining from pressuring your child to eat (whether certain foods or quantities), keeping the conversation away from the food itself, engaging your child and avoiding any high conflict topics of discussion. Including 1-2 accepted food at mealtimes can also help kids feel more comfortable, especially when they can identify something at the table they feel safe eating.
2. Could also be related to the snack food in general:
Kids might gravitate toward the snack food if there wasn’t something at the meal they felt comfortable with eating.
Sometimes, kids are asking for a snack shortly after a meal because they want specific foods they associate as "snacks", like crackers, goldfish, chips, etc.
In this case, they might need to see these foods more frequently - not just at a snack time, but maybe alongside a meal and other foods they're used to seeing regularly.
If you suspect this might be the case, consider offering those snack foods your child is gravitating toward more frequently within the context of your child’s meals and snacks.
How to Prevent Grazing on Snacks
Lastly, you might be wondering how to stop the never-ending grazing that might be happening throughout the day and between meals.
This can be a really tough one. At the time of writing this, we’re coming through a difficult year post-pandemic, and for so many of us, staying at home with our kids has meant more snacking throughout the day and less sitting down for eating times.
And you know what, that’s OKAY.
At the end of the day, you need to do what’s best for you and your family. And if letting your kids graze throughout the day is necessary for your survival and sanity, by all means, please continue to do what’s working and helping you.
However, if you’re feeling frustrated by the ongoing grazing, pantry raiding and snack requests, there are a couple things you can do to turn this around.
First, remember grazing, or eating throughout the day, is not the same as sitting down to eat a snack. It’s usually less intentional and more mindless. For kids, this may mean your kids are not as connected to their bodies’ cues and may be more likely to over eat or get their fill on the snack foods they’re eating throughout the day.
This usually means kids come to meals less hungry and wanting to eat, which can become challenging, too.
Here are some quick tips to avoid grazing:
Stick to regular meals and snack times throughout the day. Remember, kids need about 2-3 snacks between meals.
Maintain healthy boundaries around eating times. If your child is asking for snacks outside of an eating time, let them know the kitchen is closed and reassure an eating opportunity is coming soon.
Make eating times distraction free. Consider sitting with and engaging your kids during the snack. This is especially important for kids who may get distracted easily or who want to leave the table.
Depending on the age of your child and when your kids go to bed, consider Intentionally including a night time snack, regardless of whether or what your child has eaten earlier at dinner. When offering a night time snack, offer something filling, not thrilling. Meaning, offer something your child will eat if they’re hungry, like fruit with milk, toast with peanut butter, etc.
Snacking can be a source for stress, but I hope these tips have helped you gain some new perspective and strategies you can implement in your home.
You and your family deserve to enjoy freedom with food as a family, and that includes snacks.
For more help, be sure to download your printable free snack guide below: “Build a Better Snack Plate With Staying Power - For Busy Moms Raising Intuitive Eaters”.
Any questions? Be sure to leave them in the comments below.