Healthy Summer Snacks
Summer is all about relaxing, having fun and going on vacation. Days are full of going to the park, swimming at the pool, going to movies, and taking road trips to the beach. All these adventures can be full of fun and unhealthy snacking. Summer should leave us with extra memories not extra pounds.
Active kids need snacks and so do adults. We get hungry between meals and often need a little something to tide us over to the next meal. If you think of snacks as our fourth meal (we’re not talking about Taco Bell!) it helps us to realize how important it is to serve and eat healthy snacks. Parents don’t let kids chow down on chips or ice cream for dinner so why would that be a good idea as a snack or mini-meal?!
A few tips to keep in mind:
Plan ahead. Packing snacks in small baggies ahead of time will make healthy snacks easy to grab. If you know you are going to buy a snack when you go out, include fruits or veggies in your breakfast or lunch meals.
It doesn’t have to be fresh. There are plenty of non-perishable healthy options like dried fruit, fruit cups, whole grain crackers, fruit leather.
Try healthy snacks more than once. Kids don’t always do well with food changes at first. But over time they will get used to the healthy snack changes.
Top 12 throw-in-your-bag snacks:
Baby Carrots
Grapes
Cherry Tomatoes
Fruit cups or fruit pouches: Applesauce/ peaches/pears
Dried Fruit or dried fruit bar
Cheese sticks
Nuts
Apples
Cereal Mix: cheerios, craisins, chex, mini wheats, pistachios
Multigrain crackers
Snap peas
PB and J sandwich
If you are not on the go try these kid friendly snacks recipes:
- Cut the tops off of 4 oranges and hollow out the insides. Remove any seeds and combine fruit in a blender including the juice. Blend. Set the rinds in a muffin tin and fill with mixture. Drop a cherry or other berries inside the orange. Fill with mixture. Freeze for 2 or 3 hours. Soften for 5 minutes before serving.
- Freeze fruit juice in a paper cups until slushy
- Banana Popsicles. Peel bananas. Cut in half, widthwise and push a popsicle stick through one end. Spread peanut butter on bananas, roll in nuts or cereal. Wrap in waxed paper and freeze for 3 hours.
- Freeze Fruit. Cut up fruit and spread on tray with wax paper. Freeze the fruit first and then take out and pack into a sealed container and return to freezer.
Yogurt Parfait. Vanilla or plain yogurt. Add fruit. Add ¼ cup of whole grain cereal or granola.
