“Can I have a snack?”

It might be the season of ghouls and ghosts, but no question haunts parents year-round like the one above. Add in pandemic stress, ever-changing school routines, and adults dealing with new work-life balances, and the everyday chorus of kids craving snack time may feel like a cacophony.

“We're all going through a really difficult time,” says Bettina Elias Siegel, author of Kid Food: The Challenge of Feeding Children in a Highly Processed World. “And kids, like adults, may be using food to alleviate boredom or stress, or simply because they're home more often and snack food is right there, always available to them.”

Siegel says that even before the pandemic, kids were eating more