Common Advice About Kids’ Snacking is Outdated. Here’s What Parents Should Know

Back in the 1950s when Dr. Kelly Brownell was a young boy, snacking didn’t really exist.

“Children ate three meals and maybe one snack,” he says. And typically that snack occurred in one place: at home. “Nobody ate in their automobile. Maybe if you took a long trip, your parents would make sandwiches to bring along, but that would be about it,” says Brownell, who’s an emeritus professor of psychology at Duke University

Today kids’ eating patterns look strikingly different. Children eat, on average, about three snacks a day today, eight nationally representative surveys found. Children eat nearly everywhere they go, and a large portion of their snacks are ultraprocessed foods.

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Throughout the 20th century, the ultraprocessed food industry used a series of tactics to make snacking throughout the day not only acceptable but even expected, says Ashley Gearhardt, who’s a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and contributed to the new study.

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