The After School Snack Before Practice

School ends, practice starts at five, and somewhere in between a child has to eat something that will still be working at seven. Lunch was at eleven thirty. By the time warm-ups begin they are often five hours past their last real food.

This is the most commonly skipped meal in youth sport and one of the most useful. A kid who fades in the last twenty minutes is often not unfit. They are running on a school lunch.

The pattern is the same one that governs pre-game eating: the closer to activity, the smaller, simpler and more liquid it gets^{[AAP-Bright-Futures]}.

Most of these snacks are eaten in a back seat between the school pickup line and the field. That rules out more than parents expect: no plate, no more than one utensil, nothing that spills, nothing that needs to stay hot, and it has to be finishable in about ten minutes.

• Leftover rice and chicken in a cup. Room temperature is fine. One fork.
• Turkey and cheese rolled up, with an orange. No bread, no crumbs.
• Tortilla with banana and honey, rolled and sliced into coins.
• Peanut butter and honey on whole grain, cut into quarters.
• A smoothie in a bottle for the days when nothing solid is happening.

Two practical notes. Anything chocolate melts in a car in a Florida afternoon. And water goes in the bag every time, because the snack is only half the job.

• Heavy fat right before running. Fried food and creamy sauces sit in the stomach and come back at sprint three.
• A lot of fibre. Fine at dinner, unkind an hour before a session.
• Pure sugar with nothing attached. Candy alone gives a short lift and a slump in the middle of practice.
• Energy drinks. Never appropriate for children, whatever the marketing on the can says^{[AAP-Sports-Nutrition]}.
• Nothing at all. The most common option and the worst one.

Some kids come out of school genuinely uninterested in food, especially if they are nervous about a session. Forcing it turns a snack into a fight you then repeat twice a week.

• Try liquid. A smoothie or milk goes down when a sandwich will not.
• Make it smaller. Half of something eaten beats all of something refused.
• Make it the same thing every Tuesday. Routine does a lot of the work.
• Let them choose between two options you are happy with, rather than asking an open question in a car.

The planner keeps a snack slot on training days for exactly this, and the grocery list picks up whatever you choose.