Healthy Food For Kids
Kids rarely want the healthy food. They instantly reach for the sugary treats and the ultra processed bags of snacks that all their friends have. I get it! I want those things too. The trick for me and my family is finding ways to make some of those same items, but using much, much healthier ingredients.
One main benefit of making your own snacks is the ability to control the amount of sugar in your food. The food and drinks most of us consume contain an astonishing amount of sugar. To put it into perspective, a single can of soda contains around 38 grams of sugar (some contain much more). 38 grams of sugar is 9.5 teaspoons. Can you imagine adding ten teaspoons of sugar to your coffee in the morning? I doubt many of us would consider doing that, but that’s was the average soda has.
Let’s take something that’s considered a little healthier. Clif bars were popular in my house for a while and I know a lot of families use them as a healthy snack. The chocolate chip variety contains 17 grams of sugar. 16 of those are added. That’s 4 teaspoons of added sugar per bar. That’s a lot!
Fastest Ways To Get Healthy Snacks
The fastest way to get healthy snacks into your system is to simply eat more fruits and vegetables. Home grown is the very best, but any fresh produce will do the trick. Something I like to do when I’m craving something a little sweet is to grab an orange or mandarin orange. After eating it, I rarely still want something sweet because the natural sugars in the fruit satisfied that craving.
When baking, an easy swap for refined sugar is to use honey. Honey can be used in equal amounts as sugar, but is not heavily processed. I encourage you to shop locally for honey and enjoy the benefits like allergy relief and supporting local business owners.
Healthy Snacks Alternatives
One thing that was important to me when switching to healthier snacks was that my kids wouldn’t have to give up their favorite foods. One example of this is animal crackers. I wanted my kids to still have the fun of animal crackers, but with much better ingredients that will nourish their bodies.
When making snacks from scratch, you get to control everything. You can make the food as fun or silly as you want. You can also make sure it’s packed with flavor and nutrition. I don’t know about your family, but my family likes a lot of flavor! I almost always use more seasoning than a recipe calls for, especially when it comes to cinnamon and vanilla. With home made food, you can add as much or as little flavor as you like.
One thing to mention is that there will be an adjustment period when making snacks from scratch. Your taste buds are used to things tasting a certain way and when things change, it can take time for your tastes to catch up. Once they do, however, the previous foods that you ate probably won’t taste good anymore and you’ll wonder how you ever thought they tasted good. It’s definitely worth the adjustment and your body will thank you later.
Managing Time
There’s no denying that making your snacks from scratch takes time. Anything worthwhile does and this is no different. However, there are ways to make it easier.
My first piece of advice is to start small. Don’t decide to switch all the snacks all at once. Choose one or two items to start with and build upon that week after week. If you try to do it all at once, you’ll easily become overwhelmed and are likely to give up. So just start small and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Secondly, I recommend batch preparing. By this, I mean prepare snacks for the entire week, don’t go day by day. I make my own version of Clif bars and I’ll make several batches one after the other (in various flavors) to last the week. This makes things go much faster because I already have the ingredients gathered and the equipment out. If I had to make one batch today, then get everything out again in another day or two, it would be much more time consuming.
Finally, you’ll start to notice that your family will eat less. Not because they don’t like the food you make, but because the food you make will give their bodies what they need. The food you make has many more nutrients, so it takes longer to digest and makes everyone eat a little less. This will help balance your time and things won’t seem so time consuming.
Behavioral Benefits
Anyone who has switched their kids to more home made snacks will tell you that they noticed a difference in the behavior of their children. First of all, they’ll stay full for longer. Humans tend to get cranky when they’re hungry and kids are no exception. Nutritious food will help with this.
Because the food is more nutritious, their little bodies are getting more of the nutrients they need to stabilize moods and truly feed their body. If our body is lacking certain nutrients, all sorts of things can start to happen. Low vitamin D can cause depression. Not enough vitamin C causes scurvy (think of the pirates!). We need complete nutrition for both physical and mental health.
Snack Ideas
More Snack Ideas
Unhealthy Snacks That Seem Healthy
Many of the snacks that we’re used to seem healthy, but really aren’t. They’ve been marketed as healthy, but when you look at the ingredients, those claims prove false. Here are some of the most common ones…
Yogurt – contains substantial amounts of added sugars
Granola – also has tons of added sugar
Energy Bars – full of empty calories and added sugar
When making these items at home, of course you’ll be adding sugar to make them taste good. The difference is that you’ll be adding much less sugar, potentially a less refined version of the sugar (honey) and you won’t be using preservatives. If you want to add a massive health benefit, consider grinding your own flour from wheat berries. You’d be shocked to know just how bad for use commercially processed flour is! On the flip side, you’ll be shocked to learn just how GOOD for use fresh flour is!
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