Food and Beverages - Making Healthy Food Accessible

Healthy Snacks at School - Eat Healthy Snacks in the Classroom

Healthy Snacks, Healthy Mind

Children need a healthy supply of energy throughout the day to help them to be active, and reach their learning potential.

However, the quality of food and beverages consumed by students are a concern. Meals and snacks - whether from home, a store or school - may consist of foods that provide little nutrition.

Using a healthy snacking guideline or policy for the classroom allows students the opportunity to eat healthy snacks at a specified time.

Sample guideline was developed by a middle school in The Region of Peel:

Eating Healthy Snacks In-Class: A Sample Guideline

Evidence shows that students who eat healthy meals and snacks are better prepared to learn. Allowing students to eat healthy snacks in-class is one way to meet this benefit.

Purpose: To provide guidance to parents, teachers, and students on offering a positive, healthy snacking environment in the classroom.

• Healthy snacks can be consumed at a student's desk in (Insert time) period during seat work time, at teacher's discretion. Snacks are not to be consumed during teacher instruction time. NB: Physical education, music and visual arts teachers can allocate snack time to the beginning or end of their period.
  • On any specified day, teachers can reschedule snacking privileges for that period. This may be due to class presentations, period tests, etc.
• Only healthy snacks are allowed. Students who have an unhealthy snack will be asked to put their snack away.
• Snack consumption must be quiet.
• All waste from snacks must be properly discarded in the classroom waste bin by the end of the period. Garbage is not to be left in desks. Classes who do not comply will lose their snacking privileges.
• Students must eat their own snacks. Students are not to beg or ask others for some of their snacks. This can lead to class disruption.
• Keep mess from snacks to a minimum. If a mess or spill does occur, the student must quickly clean up.
• Snacks must not contain any nuts. Students must be sensitive to those who have nut allergies.
• Snacks must be brought to class. Once class starts, students are not allowed to leave class to retrieve forgotten snacks from their lockers.
• Water consumption is encouraged during all periods.
• This is a privilege! Teachers will monitor class progress. If guidelines are not followed by students, teachers are entitled to revoke snacking privileges.

The vice-principal or principal may do random classroom checks to make sure classrooms are litterless. Classes found to not clean up after themselves will lose other privileges.

Developed in collaboration with Lisgar Middle Public School Student Nutrition Committee.

What is a Healthy Snack?

A snack is considered "healthy" when it consists of choices from one or more of the four food groups in Canada's Food Guide.

Use these healthy snack ideas as a guide, as there are many other nutritious items not listed:

Vegetables and Fruits	Milk Products
Fruit (fresh or canned) Dried fruit* Vegetables with or without dip	Cheese Yogurt Pudding
Grain Products (preferably whole grains)	Beverages
Crackers/rice cakes Breads, bagels, English muffins, etc. Chapati, roti, tortilla, pita Dry cereal/trail mixes Plain popcorn Pretzels Granola bars with no added chocolate or marshmallows Small muffins, fruit loaves Plain cookies Fig bars	Water Milk (white or chocolate) Soy or rice beverages 100% fruit juice (unsweetened)
Meat and Alternatives
Cold cuts (sliced cold meats) Hummus or other bean spreads Sunflower seeds

*Encourage students to brush their teeth after eating dried fruits.

Use this Eating Healthy Snacks in Class: Sample Guideline template to adapt it for your school's needs. PDF Document (2 pages, 28 KB. To save the pdf, use your mouse to right click over the link and choose the 'Save Target As...' option). There is no protection on this pdf, so using Adobe Acrobat, you can customize it for your needs.

For more information on healthy snacking see: Discover Healthy Eating! A Teacher's Resource for Grades 1 - 8, or call The Region of Peel-Public Health at (905) 799-7700.