Part of healthy eating is offering healthy snacks at snack time for children. By serving a variety of healthy snacks, you are helping provide added nutritional value throughout the day to meet minimum daily requirements of the children.
What should you serve? Healthcare providers and nutritionists advise incorporating fresh fruits and vegetables into your healthy snacks as much as possible, leaving out unhealthy sugary foods and food loaded with unhealthy fat content. However, a number one challenge for most adults is to learn how to whip up snacks consisting of these fresh fruits and vegetables that are appealing to children.
Fret not! Here are several healthy snack ideas to play around with:
- Fresh fruit salad made up of fruits of the season where you are, then topped with low-fat flavoured yogurt.
- Pizza topped with healthy alternatives like plenty of veggies and low fat mozzarella cheese.
- Apple and cheese chunks on slim celery sticks (like shish-kabobs)
- Graham crackers and peanut butter sandwiches.
- Homemade or store bought fruit juice Popsicles or cubes (made in your ice cube bins)
- Flavoured rice cakes.
- Flavoured popcorn.
- Fresh veggie sticks with peanut butter dip and flavoured yogurt dips.
- Pita pocket bread stuffed with veggies and low fat cheese.
- Tacos shells (hard or soft) stuffed with fresh veggies and low fat cheese.
- Trail Mix – make your own with different varieties of Chex Mix, nuts, tiny pretzels and snack crackers.
Healthy Snacking Tips:
Use whole wheat grain breads and crackers when possible because they are low in sugar and fat.
Skip serving fruit juices with high fructose and other sugary content amount. Real fruit juice should be 100% fruit juice. Plus limit servings to 6 ounces daily for children under 6 and 12 ounces daily for children up to 18 from there.
Pretzels and other refined grains should not be on the snack menus a lot.
Keep snacks light; i.e. these are not full-course meals and shouldn’t be substitutes for them, either.
Serve snacks like teachers do, if you prefer – in the afternoon, like after nap time for younger ones. Or serve children right after their regular school day if they are in after school programs, or after their sports or other extracurricular activities of the afternoon.
Just make sure that when you plan healthy snacks for children, you do leave plenty of time for their next meal so that they are not too full to eat it for mom or dad – or you! You don’t want to spoil meal times.
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September 12th, 2009 at 12:17 am
After school snack ? Yeah, it’s called supper or dinner, depending on where you live….There are 3 recommended meals a day folks, breakfast lunch and dinner (supper) SNACKS?!!!!! No wonder obesity is a major health concern ! Try serving your kids 3 balanced, healthy meals a day, theres no need to eat every hour on the hour. you can survive and live healthy with only 2 meals a day, and that leaves food for the less fortunate ! ours is a nation of selfish, lazy, slothful hogs !
February 12th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
the reason for having snacks in between meals is so that you don’t eat so much at dinner or lunch. Having a small snack between meals and then having a smaller lunch or dinner is perfect. Having snacks is not the reason of childhood obesity. Obesity is when one isn’t active enough and eats too much all the time that aren’t good for you.
And who gives you the right to call people lazy, selfish, slothful hogs ! That is just rude and arogent. Next time you post something on here think before you type.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:43 am
Actually healthy snacks are important to growing children. Eating small, balanced, healthy snacks every two to three hours keeps the metablolism going faster and gives kids energy. The important thing is that kids get a protein with a carb. Keeping sugar low is also key. Teaching kids the right way to eat at a young age becomes their lifestyle. Then they don’t get used to eating junk, gaining weight, and having to change their lifestyle as college aged kids. If taught from a young age how to eat, then it generally follows them throughout life.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:58 am
Mark, Obviously you do not have children of your own or YOU are a selfish, lazy slothful hog. If you look at any of the Food Guides, they recommend in order to maintain a healthy weight is to NOT overinduldge at mealtimes. The way they suggest to do this is by eating 3 smaller meals daily with 2-3 light snacks in between. If your stomach is empty, you are hungry and your energy levels drop. When this happens, most people reach for the easy fix. If you keep a small amount of food in your stomach at all times, it regulates your body levels and you remain healthier. A childs stomach is only as big as their fist, and so you can imagine as active as they are how much energy they burn compared to those of us adults who remain seated at our computers or in front of our TV’s. They require healthy nutritious snacks to maintain their body levels. Before you criticize the population of the world and the obesity problem, you should maybe get your facts straight and know a little about children and the requirements for their health!