To Your Health-Sept. 14, 2006

After-school snacks to keep your child healthy

By: Dr. Terry Shlimbaum
   What’s the first thing most kids do when they get home from school?
   Grab a quick snack.
   Kids are particularly hungry when they get home from a long day of school, making it an ideal time to get some quality calories into them.
   For kids struggling to maintain or lose weight, it is especially important the snacks they grab help them meet their goals and not sabotage them.
   Kids need to eat healthy snacks as well as regular meals. Eating snacks decreases excessive hunger, which can lead to overeating.
   The role of the parent is to provide healthy foods at snack time as well as mealtime. The role of the child is to choose from those healthy foods.
   There are a variety of after-school snacks your child might enjoy — fruit, low-fat cheese with low-fat crackers, light popcorn, pretzels (without fillings), graham crackers, low-fat pudding, string cheese or soft tortillas rolled up with turkey or ham and tomato.
   The most important thing parents can do is act as role models by eating the right things themselves. They also can make mealtime a pleasant time, one that takes place at home more often than in restaurants and fast-food establishments.
   Children eat twice as many calories in restaurants as they would at home.
   Here are some tips to help you help your child:
   • Set an example by making healthy choices for yourself.
   • Eat at home as a family and at the table.
   • Get the kids involved in meal planning and preparation.
   • Keep active; make fitness a family affair.
   • Stay calm; make mealtime pleasant, not combative.
   Hunterdon Medical Center and the Hunterdon County YMCA have partnered to help kids lose weight the healthy way. The four-week program features a non-diet approach to weight loss and nutrition and includes an exercise component.
   Fall sessions are being held Oct. 11 to Nov. 1 for 8- and 9-year-olds and Nov. 8 to Dec. 6 for 10- to 14-year-olds.
   All meetings are held Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the YMCA Deer Path park location in Clinton Township.
   For more information, call (908) 788-6130.
   Here’s an example of a healthy after-school snack.
   
Tangy fruit salsa with cinnamon chips
   
Cinnamon chips.
   1 tablespoon sugar.
   A teaspoon of ground cinnamon.
   Four 8-inch tortillas.
   
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Spray tortillas slightly with water, then sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar mixture.
   Using a pizza cutter, cut each tortilla into wedges. Place in a single layer on a flat baking stone. Bake eight to 10 minutes or until lightly brown and crisp.
   Remove to a nonstick cooking rack and cool completely.
   To make the salsa, mix one cup raspberries, two peaches, peeled and chopped, two kiwis, peeled, sliced and quartered, one teaspoon of lime zest, two teaspoons of lime juice and one teaspoon of sugar.
   Place all salsa ingredients into a bowl and mix gently. Serve with tortilla chips. Feel free to mix in other fruits in season.
   Yield is two cups salsa and 32 chips.
   Nutritional information: Salsa (per tablespoon) is three grams of carbohydrates, no fat, 12 calories; tortilla chips (‰ tortilla) is 4 grams of carbohydrates and 21 calories.