How many times a day do you hear your children say “I’m hungry”? If your children are anything like mine, they always need a snack. My oldest is convinced that he just won’t make it through the day if he can’t have a snack after breakfast and another one after lunch. This constant desire to eat got me thinking, is grazing throughout the day the best idea for our children? The answer I have seen is “yes” as long as the snacks are healthy and nutritious. The key to getting children to eat the healthy and nutritious snacks is making the snacks and snack time fun!
It’s time for a food makeover. It’s easy to buy foods of convenience, the ones that are packaged up and easily distributed but it’s just as easy to buy healthy alternatives.
- Cheese is a great healthy snack option because it is full of protein and it can easily be cut into fun shapes with cookie cutters or even free hand. My boys love when I spell out their names.
- Smoothies are another great way to get a couple of servings of fruit and fiber into your children’s diet. You can also experiment with different yogurts and a vegetable or two.
- Fruit can be lots of fun when you make fruit kabobs in fun shapes.
- Yogurt is a huge staple in our house. It’s a great source of calcium and children can add other fruit or granola to it.
- Eggs are a great source of protein. Children love scrambled eggs and even hard-boiled eggs.
- Noodles in fun shapes are another awesome snack idea. Noodles can be mixed with veggies, chicken, light butter and tomato sauce.
If your children are grazers like mine you will be happy to know that they can snack throughout the day as long as you are willing to provide them with a variety of options of low calorie nutritional snacks, many of which were mentioned above.
More information on healthy snacks
