3 Tricks to Keep Snacking Healthy and Portable

What is a Healthy Snack?

Cookbook writer Anna Thomas said it best when she stated that, "we all eat, and it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly”¹. We’ve all heard the old saying about spoiling our appetite with a snack. It can be a daunting task to create the correctly portioned and nutritious snack that we desire our children to eat. Some people might think that snacking is even a bad thing for children to do throughout the day.

This isn’t true though!

§  A University of Florida study shows that, “healthy snack choices can provide children with some of the vitamins, minerals, proteins, and calories they need for growth, energy, and overall good health. In fact, healthy snacks can satisfy nutrient gaps and provide up to one quarter of a child's daily energy needs (USDA, “Daily Food Plan,” n.d.). Healthy snacking satisfies hunger between meals, improves concentration, and prevents overeating at mealtime”².

Three Keys to Providing Healthy Snacks

1.     Make sure that you fill a nutrient gap for the day. (Ex: If you’re having pizza for dinner, provide a snack with carrots to fill the vegetable void.)

2.     Space snacks out so that the timing doesn’t get in the way of a main course.

3.     Review and replace what you have available for them to eat. If you have a cookie jar always full, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re constantly choosing the unhealthy alternative.

WARNING: Avoid providing food as a way of calming or rewarding children for something. If you do this, they might get into the habit of acting certain ways to receive a snack, and this could lead to an unhealthy relationship with food.

3 Tricks to Keep Snacking Healthy and Portable

1. Brown Bag It- Never doubt the original way of doing things. These bags can be fun because you can easily customize them with drawings or notes for your kids. They’re also inexpensive and easily portable. And on top of all that, they’re big enough to hold all the healthy snack items your kids enjoy.

2. Make It Fun- One of my favorite snacks growing up was, “Ants on a Log”. All that you needed was celery topped with peanut butter or cream cheese.  My mom would line up raisins to make the “ants”. Alone, I wouldn’t have enjoyed these foods, but when they were all combined to make a fun, creative snack, I was all in. Fun and creative snacks make replacing sugary, high-fat foods much easier. There are all kinds of neat ideas online for creative healthy foods like trail mix or even DIY protein bars. 

3. Reuse It- Tupperware is portable, and most of us use it for leftovers anyways. If you have a little bit of leftovers from the day before that your child liked, you can save money and time by repacking it for their snack. This can be a healthy alternative to throwing a few different junk food items in their backpack.

¹Thomson, J. (2013, January 16). The Most Famous And Greatest Food Quotes Of All Time. Retrieved June 11, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/food-quotes-famous-eating_n_2481583.html

²Martinez, J., & Shelnutt, K. (2013, July 1). Raising Healthy Children: The Role of Snacking1. Retrieved June 11, 2015, from https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy1154