Kids need a lot of energy to run around, play, make a mess, and basically, be adorable all day. For them to accomplish this, they’ll need a good diet.
However, many packaged foods for kids are exceedingly unhealthy. They’re usually loaded with processed flour, sugar, and artificial additives.
Thankfully, children snack time offers an excellent opportunity to sneak some additional nutrients into your child’s diet.
Fill your child’s tiny bellies with natural foods that give energy and nourishment instead of overly processed snacks.
Here’s a list of the best snacks for kids that are both nutritious and tasty.
How to Prepare Healthy Snacks for Kids
While meals provide the majority of a child’s nutritional needs, most youngsters have at least one snack every day. Even though many of the supplied kids’ snacks have a lesser nutritional value than meals, snacks can nevertheless help your child stick to a balanced eating plan. Here’s how to create the best snacks for kids.
First, you can use snack times to promote a healthy fruit and vegetable diet. Unfortunately, most children don’t consume the recommended daily quantity of fruits and vegetables. Snack periods are an excellent time to boost access and exposure to these nutrient-dense foods. Pair them with dairy or dairy alternatives (like grapes and cheese), lean proteins (like celery and peanut butter), or wholegrain cereals and bread (such as banana sandwiches on whole grain bread).
At home, keep a variety of healthy meals available. When you have a few primary products at home, creating quick, healthy snacks is much easier. Raw veggies and fruit, yogurt dip, hummus, and cheese sticks are good options.
It would be best if you avoided processed meals and added sugars. Processed foods (produced in a factory and marketed in bags and cartons) lack nutrition and frequently include excessive sugar and salt. Furthermore, after consuming processed meals, your youngsters may become more hungry.
What to Look for in Healthy Snacks
Children’s stomachs are tiny. They typically require modest snacks in between meals to avoid being overly hungry. Snacks, especially in the early years, can be an essential element of a child’s diet to satisfy their energy needs. Snacking should be viewed as a chance to provide nutritional energy to your children.
When selecting the best snacks for kids, strive to choose healthful alternatives from the five food groups listed below:
- Vegetables
- Fruit
- Cereals (preferably wholegrain, which makes up the healthiest crackers for toddlers)
- Dairy products
- Meat, fish, poultry, and substitutes (beans & legumes, eggs, tofu, nuts)
Simple, Tasty Snacks Kids Love
Choosing healthy snacks to buy for kids has several advantages, including increasing total nutrient intake if a youngster isn’t getting enough vitamins from their main meals.
Here are some healthy snacks for kids to buy for school, road trips, and home:
The best kid snacks at school that are both healthy and tasty
- Oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, and plums
- Baby carrots and cherry tomatoes
- Crackers made with whole grains
- Sugar-free granola bars
Home snacks that are good for you and the kids
- Cheese with wholegrain crackers
- Applesauce
- Almond butter-filled celery sticks
- Apple slices with peanut butter on top
- Salsa with fried whole grain tortilla chips
Healthy snacks for kids on the go
- Pretzels
- Cereal
- Trail mix
- Homemade muffins
- Fruit slivers
- Bring a small cooler with perishables and veggies to keep things balanced if you’re going on a long trip.
Snacks Kids Should Avoid
It might be challenging to ensure that your children are eating correctly. Thanks to deceptive packaging and aggressive marketing tactics, many snacks boldly advertise their health advantages, yet this could not be further from the truth. To ensure you’re refueling your little ones with kids favorite snacks while keeping their health in mind, here are some harmful “healthy” snacks you should avoid serving:
Yogurt
Although some healthy yogurt alternatives are available, the ones most frequently promoted to children are laden with chemicals, preservatives, and sugar, making them a not-so-healthy choice. They also include high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavorings, and colors, making them more like candy than the nutritious snack they claim to be.
Granola bars
Unfortunately, healthy store-bought snacks for kids are few and far between. The most challenging aspect of so many of these unhealthy foods is that they masquerade as healthy delights. Granola bars are a perfect example of this. Most granola bars you’ll buy at your local supermarket include additional chocolate, candy, or other sugar sources. Choose selections that combine nuts, oats, seeds, and dried fruit to get the most out of this snack.
Pre-packaged lunch combos
While easy and kid-friendly, these meat and cracker pairings come with a lot of salt, fat, and sugar, which aren’t good for anybody. Given the vast list of senseless chemicals and preservatives, it’s far preferable to bring your own.
Vegetable chips
Even though they include the word “vegetable” in their name and may be marketed as the best healthy snacks for kids, vegetable chips aren’t as nutritious as you may imagine. This is due to the heat and other processing procedures used to transform them into chips, which strip the vegetables of the vitamins and minerals that make them so healthy.
Drinks made from fruit juice
The majority of juices on supermarket shelves contain only a small quantity of natural fruit juice. They’re also high in calories and sugar and lack the vitamins and elements that make fruit healthy. To get the most out of it, make sure you only buy 100% fruit juices and restrict your kids to roughly four fluid ounces of juice each day.
Helpful Snack Tips & Tricks
Whether you’re prepping for a newborn or are trying to switch away from unhealthy habits, here are some eating ground rules you should establish:
- Create boundaries – Teach younger children to seek permission before helping themselves to food.
- Limit their serving size – Serve snacks in a dish rather than allowing children to eat straight from the bag or box. Choose tiny portions to avoid interfering with the child’s main meals, but large enough to satisfy them.
- Offer better drink selections – Instead of soda or fruit-flavored beverages, provide water or fat-free or low-fat milk.
- Serve whole fruit instead of juice – when you do serve juice, make sure it’s 100% fruit juice and limit kids to half a cup per day.
- Get rid of distractions – It’s critical to raise attentive eaters who eat until they’re full and appreciate what they’re eating. When children play or watch television while eating, they are less likely to notice the flavor, texture, and quantity of the food they are eating, contributing to overeating.
- Make healthy snacks accessible – You should keep Reduced-fat milk and yogurt, fruit, vegetable sticks, almonds, and wholegrain bread in the fridge or pantry as nutritious snacks. Maintain a fruit dish that is regularly replenished with seasonal fruits.
- Show children how to make their own snacks – Teach your kids how to make healthy snacks like toasted sandwiches, popcorn, wholemeal muffins, and pita pizzas with basic kitchen equipment.
- Consider the timing – If you wait too long to offer your child a snack, they will be so hungry that they will eat anything that comes their way, leaving you with little time to prepare something healthy. At the same time, you should leave at least 2 hours between the snack and their next meal so that their appetite for the main meal is not spoiled.
If you’re a first-time parent, you’re probably still learning as you go. Parenting questions surrounding the best snacks for kids often arise, whether you’re just starting your pregnancy or have rowdy toddlers running around. And, let’s face it, planning out meals can be exhausting at times. However, you don’t have to tackle this adventure alone.
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