Healthful Snack Ideas

Most people snack on foods that have little nutritional value. Snack time is a perfect time to get more healthful plant based foods in your diet. Most people snack on chips, pretzels, protein bars, candy, cookies, cakes - like the Hostess 100 calorie poison crap that's out there. Here are some tips to help you make wiser snack choices.

Instead of this: chemically bleached white pretzels
Try this: whole wheat pretzels dipped in hummus

Instead of this: bag of chips
Try this: baked whole grain pita chips with hummus (yea, I'm a huge hummus fan).

Instead of this: snickers bar
Try this: sliced banana with peanut butter and honey

Instead of this: cookies
Try this: pecans and dried cherries with a few dark chocolate chips

Instead of this: power bar - these can have many calories and are not ideal if you are going to just sit in your office all day.

Try this: chopped apple pieces with walnuts and raisins

Get the idea? These are great ideas for your kids as well. It's up to you how you train them to eat. If you have junk in your house, they'll want junk. I have natural cookies in my house, but my kids know they're allowed to eat them in moderation. After dinner is usually when they have a couple of cookies - not half the bag. When my kids come home from school, they are not allowed to eat cookies and chips or Poptarts for snack. They eat fruit, nuts, veggie sticks etc. Thanks to my mom that follows my rules explicidly. Really, it can be done. If you're not home when your kids come home from school, have it ready for them in single portion zip top bags. Tell them the rules - certain foods are for healthful snack, and certain foods are for dessert. Desserts are best eaten after a nutritious meal so that there is less sugar spike in the bloodstream and you'll eat less after a meal. If you eat dessert as a snack when your hungry, you are more likely to eat more than you should. If they don't follow the rules, then stop buying the desserts. It's that simple.