Why September is a great time to rethink the way we talk about, offer and enjoy snacks
September sees the return of Snack-tember, an initiative from the British Nutrition Foundation designed to get children and young people thinking differently about snacks.
Throughout the month, children aged five -16 are encouraged to explore different foods, try new snacks and have a go at making their own. The campaign focuses on increasing foods such as fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, beans and pulses, while reducing saturated fat, salt and sugars.
Snack-tember is not simply about telling children what they Should and Shouldn’t eat. At its best, it creates an opportunity to make food interesting, practical and enjoyable. For schools and care settings, it also provides a useful prompt to look again at the role snacks play within the wider food offer.
Snacks matter
Snacks can sometimes be treated as an afterthought. A great deal of attention is rightly given to creating balanced and appealing meal menus, while the food offered between meals can receive less focus. Yet snacks can make an important contribution to a child’s overall diet.
They are also often one of the areas where children and young people have more opportunity to exercise personal choice. This makes the snack offer important not only nutritionally, but also as a way of helping children develop confidence around food and begin making choices for themselves. The aim does not need to be to turn every snack into a nutrition lesson. Instead, the focus can be on the range, variety and balance of what is available, while making sure healthier options are still appealing, familiar and enjoyable.
- Could fruit be presented in a more interesting way?
- Could wholegrains feature more often?
- Could hummus or other bean-based dips sit alongside vegetables or crackers?
- Could familiar snacks be adapted to offer greater variety or nutritional value?
Snack-tember provides a good opportunity to try something different while also finding out what children genuinely enjoy.
The language around food matters too
Snack-tember is also a useful opportunity to think about how food is talked about around children and young people.
Messages associated with food are usually given with the best intentions, but the language used around food can sometimes have more impact than expected. Describing foods as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘naughty’, ‘clean’ or ‘junk’ can attach judgement to eating. Similarly, praising one child for making a “healthy” choice can unintentionally suggest that another child’s choice is somehow wrong.
For some children and young people, food may already be linked with anxiety, sensory challenges, body image, control or previous experiences. Language that seems harmless can therefore sometimes feel much more significant to the child hearing it. This does not mean avoiding conversations about nutrition. It means making those conversations more thoughtful.
Rather than describing a food as bad, conversations can focus on what different foods provide. Rather than pressuring a child to eat a particular food, the emphasis can be on curiosity, exposure and exploration. And rather than centering conversations around calories or weight, they can focus on energy, growth, concentration, fibre, vitamins, minerals, enjoyment, taste and variety.
Food education should help children become curious and confident around food, rather than worried about getting it wrong.
Creating an environment where better choices are easier
Education is only one part of the picture. Encouraging children to explore a wider variety of foods works best when the food environment supports those choices too. For catering teams, Snack-tember is a useful opportunity to review what is currently available between meals.
- Which snacks are most popular?
- Where could greater variety be introduced?
- Are there opportunities to use seasonal ingredients?
- Could an existing recipe be adapted or presented differently?
- Are children being given a meaningful choice?
- And crucially, will they actually want to eat it?
- A nutritionally excellent snack that consistently ends up in the bin benefits nobody.
At AVE, the food offer is considered as a whole. Nutrition, cost, procurement, availability, sustainability, acceptability and waste all need to work together if changes are going to be successful in practice.
More than a month-long campaign
Snack-tember provides a great reason to start these conversations in September, but the principles can continue well beyond the campaign itself.
If one new snack becomes established on a school menu, one child discovers a food they enjoy, or a catering team starts thinking differently about the language and environment surrounding food, the impact can extend much further than a single month.
Ultimately, children and young people need the skills and confidence to navigate food for themselves. That comes from providing nutritious choices, but it also comes from allowing them appropriate choices and creating an environment where food feels enjoyable, supportive and free from unnecessary judgement. And that is something worth encouraging far beyond Snack-tember.
