SALT LAKE CITY — Snacking is an important part of maintaining energy levels in kids. It’s important to allow children to snack and to provide them with healthy options. However, this can sometimes seem overwhelming due to the fact that some healthy or pre-packaged snacks can be expensive. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
Here are some tips to help provide healthy snacks for your kids, and do it without breaking the bank.
Set limits
The first tip is to set limits. This can be tricky, but it’s important to set some limits to help teach your children healthy eating habits and prevent them from snacking all day and not eating their meals. One of the best ways to set limits is by following Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility. The method states that the parent or adult decides when and where to eat, while the child decides what to eat and how much.
By implementing this method you are allowing your children to listen to their own hunger and satiety cues while still having control to prevent them from eating too many snacks right before a meal. For an example of how this looks in my home, I choose the time we eat the snack. I then allow my children to decide from a variety of pre-planned snacks (the next tip will deal with how I select the snack options). Because my children are still very young, I usually only offer two or three options for snacks. Having too many options at a young age can be overwhelming. Once they have decided on a snack, they choose how much they want to eat. I don’t force them to finish anything if they are full.
Provide a variety
It’s very important to provide a variety of food options for your children. This is important for both meal times and snack times. The more variety you expose your children to, the more likely they are to try and like new foods. Each week I like to try and provide snack options from each of the five food groups. I like to provide a variety of healthy and “unhealthy” snacks each week. This helps my children understand that all foods can fit into a balanced diet; all foods can be part of a healthy diet.
Now, I know thinking of snacks can also be tricky. So, here are some ideas that are broken down into the five food groups.
Fruit:
- Fresh fruit
- Canned fruit
- Frozen fruit
- Fruit smoothies
- Fruit snacks
- Raisins/craisins: yogurt, chocolate or the sour covered ones can be a fun mix up on the original option
- Fruit leather
Vegetables:
- Fresh vegetables: try to provide a variety of colors. Also, don’t be afraid of allowing your kids to dip their veggies in ranch or hummus. It provides needed healthy fats in their diet
- Veggie fries: Harvest snap peas
- Edamame (soy beans)
- Salsa
Protein/legumes/fats:
- Peanuts
- Mixed nuts
- Trail mix
- Jerky
- Edamame
- Hard boil egg
- Peanut butter or other butter spreads
- Protein bars for kids
- Roasted chickpeas: you can google different seasoning recipes for a fun twist on these
- Pepperoni
- Deli meats
Grains:
- Whole-grain crackers
- Tortilla chips: great with salsa to add veggies, or with guacamole to add fats into your diet
- Pita bread or pita crackers
- Bread for toast: you can rotate with either whole-grain or white bread
- Pretzels
- Goldfish crackers
- Crackers: Wheat Thins, Ritz, Club, etc.
- Chips
- Popcorn
Dairy:
- Yogurt: Greek or regular
- Freeze-dried yogurt drops
- String cheese
- Cheese slices
- Laughing cow cheese
- Carnation instant breakfast or other flavored milk
- Drinkable yogurts
- Frozen yogurt (great for the summertime)
Cost Control
One last tip to help control the cost of snacking: When possible, buy in bulk. Avoid individual pre-packaged items, as they tend to be more expensive. If it can’t be avoided — like with fruit snacks or granola bars — provide only a limited number per week. It is too expensive for me to buy a Costco box of fruit snacks every week, so I simply divide the number of items in the box by four weeks and only place that number in the pantry each week. This allows my kids access to the snack but helps me control the cost.
Hopefully, these tips are helpful for you and your family. Enjoy snacking!
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