Are You Feeding Your Kids Gluten Free Snacks? | Plantraw.com

Are your kids eating healthy snacks, sweets & desserts?

When the best for your child is the worst.

As parents, the health and wellbeing of our children is at the top of our minds. However, “health” and “wellbeing” can be two entirely different terms. In fact, they may be contradictory in some cases.

Health is what’s best for your child. Wellbeing is what your child loves best. Sometimes the latter can be the worst for your child’s health.

We are all familiar with children’s affinity to snacks, sweets & desserts. Treats are invariably greeted by children with unbridled glee, and nothing makes parents happier than seeing their children’s merriment.

However, this wellbeing has consequences, and as we will show in this article, they can be the worst.

When sweets are limited, and complemented with fruits and healthy snacks, the health implications will be limited. When they are not, the damage to children’s health can range from cavities to pancreatic dysfunction and juvenile diabetes.

Sometimes the contradiction between “health” and “wellbeing” can be dramatic.

A gluten-sensitive child may discover on a playdate that she absolutely loves doughnuts, buns or crackers. Her immediate wellbeing—her pleasure from these snacks—will shoot through the roof. But a subsequent stomach ache can be devastating.

A child may be sensitive to gluten but be asymptomatic, or present with symptoms that the parents don’t connect to the consumption of gluten, like fatigue, bloating, and anemia. The most frequent symptom is diarrhea, but it may not occur right after the ingestion of gluten, and may just be soft stool.

In such undiagnosed cases, the long-term consequences can be severe; they include osteoporosis, stunted growth, malnutrition, rickets, and more. That’s because the immune system reacts to the ingestion of gluten with inflammation that damages the lining of the small intestines, creating a slew of problems as it hinders the absorption of important nutrients.

Therefore, being a good parent requires a delicate balancing act, taking care of the child’s health without detracting of the child’s wellbeing.

What to do?

Just as in the case of generally harmful sweets, the solution for gluten sensitivity is to find snacky substitutes that will be equally enjoyable and won’t detract from the child’s gustatory pleasure and wellbeing.

Will children like such treats?

Yes, they will love it even if it's gluten-free

Gluten-sensitive children today are lucky. Gluten-free treats are available everywhere—online, in health-food stores, and even in the health sections of conventional supermarkets. Many of these snacks are pretty good.

Plantraw’s products, we are proud to say, are downright delicious; they will beat the taste of any conventional gluten-filled snack anytime.

What gluten-free snacks are available?    

Gluten-free snacks range the gamut—from substitutes of wafers and waffles to crackers.

At Plantraw™ all our products are gluten-free, and they are all absolutely yummy. Our Cocoa-Date Truffles are just as good, if not better than conventional chocolate truffles (though the latter may not contain gluten anyway); our Raw Crisps™ crackers are phenomenal, and they come in a variety of flavors that don’t even exist in conventional crackers; and our vegan ice cream substitute, Ice Crage™, is as good as any commercial ice cream, and is never processed with any gluten or other additives.

Treat your kids with delicious gluten-free snacks

To conclude, seeking gluten-free snacks for kids may be imperative for some parents, but companies like Plantraw™ make it easy.

Children with gluten sensitivities or Celiac disease don’t have the option of consuming gluten-laden snacks “occasionally” as other children consume sweets. The have to totally avoid gluten if they are to avoid intestinal damage and consequent conditions like malnutrition, anemia and stunted growth.

Malabsorption of important nutrients like calcium and vitamin D may even result in infertility in adulthood. Celiac patients who chronically ingest gluten have even been shown to have an increased risk of intestinal lymphoma, small bowel cancer, and nervous system issues (from seizures to peripheral neuropathy).

Thus, gluten-free snacks for kids are a wonderful solution that enables parents to achieve for their kids both long-term health and ongoing wellbeing. There is no need to compromise or to detract from a child’s enjoyment of snacks.

Over time, children will get used to their strict gluten-free regimen. They will avoid unpleasant symptoms (if they are symptomatic) and will benefit from unhindered intestinal health, as if they never suffered from this condition.

A side benefit is that as children and as adults they will tend to eat more nutritionally-dense foods, because in the modern-day diet glutenous foods tend to be nutrient-poor. It’s almost as though gluten-sensitive kids are forced to eat more nutritious foods that will promote their general health far beyond their intestines. A major caveat there, though, is that to achieve this general health they will indeed opt for nutritionally-dense alternatives, like those of Plantraw™.