Healthy Snacking

Hungry...but it’s not quite mealtime yet? This is something I’m incredibly familiar with, as I’m an enthusiastic embracer of snack time. But here’s my complaint about snacks: There is a serious lack of healthy convenient options out there! Please note the word ‘convenient’ in that sentence. While I could rummage up for you a big list of healthy snacks, over half of them would require some prep work. Most packaged or fast-food snacks are, at the very least, full of ingredients we can’t even pronounce. Yet some of us actually like to leave our house and have some options to take with us. My number one rule to snacking is don’t just trust what the front of the label says because I assure you, if it boasts big time health claims, odds are you’ll be disappointed when you turn it around and (try to) read the label. So what’s a snacker to do? Here is my list of unofficial terms to snacking, as well as a list of favorite, truly healthy items. Take away what you like and what works for you.

Trainer Girl’s Snacking Terms

1. The snack item should not contain more hundreds-of-calories than there are hours before the next meal. What this means is, 100 calories buys me about an hour before I'm hungry again. If I've got 2 hours until the next meal, my snack probably shouldn't be over 200 calories.

2. The snack should contain at least some protein and fiber, and ideally it should not have a high glycemic load. Bonus points if vegetables are involved. This increases satiety, nutrition, and makes our moms proud.

3. The snack should ideally be made entirely of whole foods. I at least like to avoid toxic snacks full of trans fats and known carcinogens, and I like to minimize sodium, sugar, refined grains, gratuitous and non-nutritive calories, and artificial flavorings, colorings, and sugar alcohols (i.e.: Splenda is not splendid).

4. The snack should not taste crappy. This is important.

5. However, the snack also can't taste too delicious unless portion control measures are in place. For example, I can easily consume an entire days worth of calories in 10 minutes eating trail mix, and still be sniffing around the cupboards looking for more. Even the healthiest of dried fruit and nut combos can be a nutritional disaster unless I throw a reasonable amount in a baggie and march straight out the door.

Trainer Girl’s Healthy Snack List

• Raw veggies with healthy dip (hummus, guacamole, yogurt-based dips etc)

• Canned wild salmon (mushed with a bit of goat cheese is my preferred way)

• Hard-boiled eggs

• Meat or fish jerky (naturally preserved, not the junk-food kind)

• Fruit

• Nuts (portioned, remember?)

• Yogurt without a bunch of sugar added (0% Greek plus my own dollop of honey)

• Veggie chips like kale, sweet potato, etc. (by that I don't mean potato or corn or rice chips flavored with veggies, but actual vegetable chips. These can be hard to find unless you make 'em yourself.)

• Seaweed snacks (you can get these in health stores and even in the natural section of Fred Meyer)

• Popcorn (the non-butter-saturated kind)

• Whole grain crackers with meat or cheese or a sensible spread or dip (by whole grain I mean the whole grain, not a bunch of enriched grains combined to make the cracker taste whole grain)

• Almond or peanut butter and bananas (watch out for ‘partially hydrogenated’ oil in your peanut butter – specifically in the Jiffy and Skippy brands, excluding their ‘Natural’ lines)

• Dark chocolate – 60% and above

• A very small plate of last night’s leftovers, provided you ate in a healthy fashion...