It's tough enough ensuring your children learn about proper nutrition and exercise, without other less well intentioned parents undermining your healthy eating objectives.
Whilst shops and vending machines display sugar, fat and salt laden snacks the one place you would hope to see healthier snacks is on the sports field. With the idealistic view of this arena being populated with fruit, yogurts and pure fruit juices, why is it that just the opposite is making many parents grind their teeth in frustration as their child downs another Krispy Kreme doughnut, or chocolate brownie.
Children's baseball, softball, soccer games etc democratically share out the job of snack providing on a rotational basis, with parents taking it in turns to provide enough snacks for the entire team. But how can you guarantee that the snacks being brought by a parent are inline with your nutritional beliefs, and more to the point, how can you persuade your child, without humiliating them in front of their peers, to eschew the chocolate brownie and soda, replacing it with a banana and fresh orange juice. Hmmmmmmm tough one that.
Some parents have the opinion that if their child is doing some exercise then it doesn't really matter a whole lot what they eat during and after it, these are the parents who turn up with bags of nachos, doughnuts, chocolate coated cereal bars and bottles of soda as their contribution to the snack providing rota.
The problem is that it's highly unlikely that a child, or adult for that matter, will burn off anywhere near the amount of calories that they ingest eating the sugary, fatty snacks. It seems to be one of those peculiar brain issues that makes people think that running around for 30 minutes or so means they can then scoff a days calorie intake in a few snack laden minutes and it won't make any difference.
Get real people, 30 minutes of gentle sport will not burn off that doughnut your child ate at half time, or the one that they had at full time as a treat for having taken part.
Coaches should really be dictating what the parents should bring, but a lot don't make an issue out of it because of the aggressive response that this type of intervention can produce. At the beginning of the season some will lay down what can and can't be brought to the game for half-time and full-time snacks, but if the parent thinks they know best then Coach is on a loser.
The problem also is that parents think that they will incur the wrath of the other kids by providing healthy snacks, which will also feed back to their own offspring, and no parent wants to make their child the brunt of childhood nastiness, bullying or turn them into a social pariah because their parents bought "bad" snacks to the game.
Some typical snacks served at childrens sports events are:
Chocolate brownie, 1: 400 calories, 20g fat
Krispy Kreme doughnut, original glazed, 1: 200 calories, 12g fat
Pringles, original flavour, small stack: 140 calories, 10g fat
Doritos cheesier nacho chips, small handfull : 140 calories, 7g fat
Milk chocolate granola bar, 1: 130 calories, 5g fat
And typical snacks some parents would prefer to see served at childrens sports events:
Banana, 1 medium: 105 calories, 0g fat
Pure orange juice, small carton: 100 calories, 0g fat
Yogurt, small carton: 80 calories, 2g fat
Raisins, small carton: 100 calories, 0.5g fat
Apple, 1 medium: 65 calories, 0g fat
Plain water: 0 calories, 0g fat
The issue is education, not just the kids but the parents too. Gentle persuasion that healthy snacks are a better option takes time and perseverance, but it's achieveable. Why not get Coach to organise a short session where you can do a 5 minute talk on ideal refuelling foods after sports events, back these up with a few simple facts and figures. Get the kids onside and then the parents will hopefully follow. After all, bananas come in Natures very own environmentally friendly wrapper, and if they're good enough for elite athletes then they should be good enough for everyone else too.
In the end it all boils down to one simple thing, if you love your children you'll want them to live long healthy lives, so feed them right.
