A healthy relationship with food is one of the many things parents are supposed to help children develop. We want them to choose fresh before packaged, fruit before fruit-flavored, and vegetables before they get fried. But beyond the foods themselves, the times and reasons we eat also play major roles in establishing our relationship with food. Youth sport practices, games, and tournaments are packed with snacks and sports drinks, which leads the question: Are we over-snacking our young athletes?
Every parent has stories about the time(s) their kid went from fine to full meltdown in the span of five minutes, only to rebound equally quickly after getting some food down the hatch. That’s why we all have secret stashes of crackers, granola bars, or fruit gummies in backpacks, handbags, and car consoles. But according to research from Toben Nelson at the University of Minnesota, despite expending more energy than non-sport participants, kids who participate in youth sports often end up consuming more calories than they expend – and a lot of it is junk food. Here are some of the contributing factors:
Not really. A study by Wickel and Eisenmann used accelerometers to examine the contributions of youth sports, physical education class, and recess to the activity level of 119 boys between the ages of six and 12 years old. Out of 110 minutes of ‘moderate to vigorous physical activity,’ 23% was from youth sports, and 27% was from PE and recess (11 and 16%, individually). Perhaps more surprising was the finding that more than half the time spent in youth sports was sedentary or light activity.
Toben Nelson created a graph to illustrate the approximate caloric expenditures of youth athletes ages six to 16 years old during 60 minutes of light, moderate, and intense physical activity. An 8-year-old boy at the median weight for his age would burn approximately 150 Calories in an hour of continuous intense activity. Considering the amount of low-intensity time during games, the actual expenditure is likely even lower.
Basing eating behaviors on habit instead of hunger is a contributing factor for obesity at any age. In an interview for Parents.com, childhood feeding specialist Dr. Katja Rowell, M.D., commented, “When kids are allowed to eat all day, it robs them of the chance to ever develop an appetite.” In other words, they feel hungry more frequently because they are unaccustomed to being unfed for prolonged periods of the day. If you’re used to eating every two hours, four hours without food will seem interminable.
Snacks as a pre-requisite for activity, or snacks as a reward for activity, can also establish poor eating behaviors. Encouraging kids to fuel up before practice or a game, replenish energy during a game, and then finish every activity with a snack or sweet treat as a reward, can condition them to make an unhealthy association between activity and food. In teenagers and adults this can manifest as ‘caloric overcompensation,’ the tendency to overeat based on an over-estimation of calories expended and calories necessary to support their activity level.
TrueSport® is a grassroots movement born and powered by the experience and values of USADA–the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. The TrueSport® mission is simple and bold: to change the culture of youth sport by providing powerful educational tools to equip young athletes with the resources to build the life skills and core values for lasting success on and off the field.