No Logic in School Eating Patterns

When children are in elementary school, they are often provided with a midmorning and midafternoon snack of milk and a cookie, with lunch between the snacks. This is a desirable and needed strategy. However, when children move up to junior high school, just at the time they are hitting their adolescent growth spurt and in need of a huge amount of nutrients and energy, the cookie and milk snacks are removed. This makes no sense whatsoever. Junior high school teachers often complain that this is the most difficult school age to deal with but do nothing to ensure a stable blood sugar, a strategy that could have a major beneficial effect on behavior and nutrition status. Maintaining a snack in elementary, junior high, and high schools would help satisfy energy needs and, as an aside, do much to control undesirable behavior. It's not fun to be around people who are hypoglycemic.

Hydration issues remain a concern for young athletes because, compared with adults, they have lower sweat rates, produce more heat per unit of body weight, experience a faster rise in core body temperature, are predisposed to voluntary dehydration, and do not acclimatize as quickly to warm environments.²⁹ These factors dramatically increase a young athlete's risk of developing heat injury. As a result, coaches and parents should become fully aware of the mental and physical signs of dehydration and heat injuries and should pay careful attention to the ambient temperature and humidity to take appropriate measures for reducing risk. The fact that young athletes are predisposed to voluntary dehydration (i.e., they consume insufficient fluids to maintain hydration state even when they are available) should persuade adults to encourage drinking and observe drinking patterns. It is also useful to have beverages available that young athletes are more likely to consume.³⁰ These include beverages that have a sweet taste and include small amounts of salt to help sustain blood volume and sweat rates.