Healthy Snack Ideas

Okay, let’s face it: our kids snack. We’ve done various overhauls to improve their diet—a few years ago we nixed all juice to become a milk-or-water household. We try to emphasize meals together and teach them about eating a grain, a meat, and a vegetable, and we learn about food groups. We encourage Ellie, our pickiest eater, to have a try-one-bite policy. I do cook with them in mind, but don’t habitually cook a separate meal to meet their demands. We do our best to minimize snacking before mealtimes or as a habit in the car or stroller; we try to avoid food as a “quick fix” for fussiness.

That said, when they do snack, it can be a huge effort to find stuff that doesn’t come highly-processed, packaged, or sweetened. In her preschool, Ellie gets apple juice and goldfish, which is pretty typical fare. Here are some ideas for snacks that are healthy, and that our kids really like:

Fruit. This one’s easy. Our kids absolutely love fruit: berries, melons, bananas, apples, kiwis, Asian pears, mangos, papayas, clementines, cherries, fresh figs, persimmons, grapes. We make sure to have a variety around at all times (Costco and the Asian market is a go-to for that), we try to experiment with new fruits, and we avoid sweetening with sugar or honey—good fruit is sweet enough as it is!

Popcorn. Lately I’ve been in a homemade popcorn kick. I take one-fourth cup of oil (e.g. grapeseed), dump in a half-cup of popcorn seeds, and heat over medium-high in a pot with the lid on. The kids love watching the seeds pop, then we sprinkle with a little salt and sometimes some sugar; I like flavoring it myself and knowing there’s no butter.

Dried fruit. You have to be careful there’s no sugar added—lots of dried fruit, like cranberries, come sweetened, which is fine as long as you’re aware. We like these dried fruit strips that Trader Joe’s sells; you can get just-fruit type bars from Whole Foods as well—unlike fruit roll-ups, these are just compressed, dried fruit, with no added sugar. The kids love them, though they get stuck on their teeth often.

Homemade granola bars. You have to be careful about the granola bars you buy, but making them yourself is a fun option; you can control the sugar portion, or use honey or agave nectar instead of white sugar, or stick in more oats and whole grains. I’ve tried a few recipes with limited success but might try another one this weekend.

String cheese. I am somewhat of a cheese fanatic. The kids love peeling these apart, and I have to admit, so do I.

Specialty chips. I am also somewhat of a chip fanatic, and there are healthier chips out there if you look around a bit. Our current kick are Chia Crisps’ black bean pickle chips.

Edamame. We buy these frozen from Trader Joe’s, both in and out of the shell. They love popping the seeds from the shells into their mouths. They like eating edamame, or peas, out of baggies or cups while on the go.

Sauce packs. You know what I’m talking about: those yogurts and fruit and vegetable sauces that come in packets they can squeeze and suck on. There are so many brands of these out there but they are quite good and sometimes a great way to get in veges and fruits, as long as your kid is old enough not to be too messy.

Frozen yogurt sticks. Frozen bananas. Pretty much, if we put anything on a stick and freeze it, our kids will love it. We buy these tubes of yogurt that we freeze into yogurt pops. I freeze bananas stuck on popsicle sticks, and even I love those.

Smoothies. We have been on a smoothie kick for a while. Kids love them, you can throw so much into them, and they are so easy to make! We buy huge bags of frozen berries, pineapples, strawberries, and mangos from Costco. For a typical shake, I put in a ripe banana, a couple generous spoonfuls of greek yogurt, a handful of frozen strawberries, and a few frozen pineapples. The frozen fruit automatically adds an icy quality. The pineapples give a nice tang; the bananas make it sweet enough; the yogurt makes it creamy; and the strawberries give it a nice overall flavor. I can throw in some spinach or carrots and they don’t notice. When we have fresh watermelon, we use that instead of yogurt and it gives it a lovely juicy, sweet flavor. It’s amazing how great they can taste without any ice cream or sorbet or even honey.

Rice cakes. You’d think these would be too tasteless, but our kids really like them, even when they are brown rice cakes without salt or added flavoring.