7 September 2011

For confirmed subscribers only: newsletter from Healthy Eating Made Easy.

Healthy Snack Ideas

We love healthy snacks at Healthy Eating Made Easy, and this month we've even made a little YouTube slideshow of a few of our favourites.

We brainstormed ideas, and came up with 22 healthy snacks, some quick and easy, others needing a bit of preparation, all of them healthy and delicious.

Healthy Snacks for Kids

No one loves snacks like kids do, but as a parent, how do you make sure they're eating healthy snacks, rather than junk?

Here are five tips to help you keep kids snacking healthily

- Don't keep junk food in the house. The ideal would be to remove temptation and buy no junk foods whatsoever. In the real world, that attitude may be too hard for many of us to stick to. But even if you can't eradicate junk from your weekly shop completely, you can buy fewer items and smaller sizes.

Huge sacks of potato chips just encourage over-eating. Buy small bags. Likewise giant size bottle of soda and fizzy drinks. Buy a small number of individual sized bottles and ration them - but, much better, drink water instead. Banning foods simply makes them more appealing, so enjoy some unhealthy treats, but in small amounts and only two to three times a week.

- Keep healthy snacks for kids on hand for the times when kids come home starving and need food right away. Try hunks of wholemeal bread with peanut butter, banana sandwiches, a pile of sliced fruit (which always feels more filling than eating a piece of fruit whole), a serving of baked beans, low fat plain yogurt with fruit or nuts stirred in.

Snacks like these fill the gap between home-time and dinner-time and won't give them a sugar rush or overdose of unhealthy fats.

- With younger children, be consistent and offer healthy foods only. 'Yes, you can have a snack, would you like a pear, or a kiwi?' As parents, it's up to us to take control of what our children eat and we can hardly blame them if they get a taste for unhealthy foods because those are the foods we offer them.

- Bear in mind always, how powerful a role model you are. What do kids see, when they observe your eating habits? Do you eat together as a family regularly? Do you eat in front of the TV, so that you're not really aware of what, and how much, you're eating? Do you always reach for an unhealthy snack rather than a healthy one?

Kids copy you without even being aware that that's what they're doing. Make sure you're an influence for good health and you'll be doing your own wellbeing a favour as well.

- Keep an eye on portion sizes. A snack should be considerably smaller than a meal, and children need smaller servings than adults. This page on portion control tells your more.

If you're trying to shed some weight, keep an eye out for our next ezine, where we'll share some healthy snacks for weight loss.

Happy Healthy Eating!

Elizabeth

Healthy Eating Made Easy