Snacks
Today someone told me that they bought a bag of Paul Newman pretzels becuase they thought it would be a healthy snack only to find out that after finishing the bag the contents added up to 1000 calories. It's easy to get in trouble with snacks. Baked Potato chipe, dried fruit, chocolate covered rasins all sound like healthy snacks, and in limited amounts they are ok, but if you are gonna finish the bag they quickly add up to a thousand calories.
I've listed some of my favorite snacks and at the end I've added a list of suggestions from the American Heart Association which separates snacks by craving category. Check it out and see what works for you.
Here are some ideas on reasonable snacks. Of course you can eat cut vegetables. Carrots, celery, brocolli, cauliflower, cucumber, peppers all colors. You can use a fat free salad dressing or low fat dip (just be sure you take a look at the calorie content and add it in for the day)
Fresh fruit is a good snack. Apples, cantelope, pairs, grapes, oranges, bananas. Grapes are a little sweeter and have more calories than most fruit so be sure to watch the amount of the serving of these.
Crunchy/salty snacks. I use air popped popcorn a lot. I spray it with a butter flavored cooking spray that gives it a bit more flavor and lets salt stick to it. If you skip that all the salt falls to the bottom of the bowl and it's like eating cardboard.
There are a lot of varities of soy crisps out there. GenSoy makes a bag which is fairly large and had only about 300 calories in the entire bag. Plus you get about 20 or more grams of protein from the chips.
The problem with salty snacks is they are salty, high in sodium so if your watching that you may need to skip these.
A bowl of high fiber cereal is a great snack. Use skim milk or eat it dry as a crunchy snack.
You can add some cereal to a container of lite yogurt and it makes a good snack.
Protein drinks are a good sanck and can make a reasonable dessert substitute. If you use frozen fruit and mix it with a little less water it's close to icecream.
OK. There are a few of my thoughts on Snacking. If you have any other ideas please e mail them to me.
Crunchies
• Apples and pears
• Breadsticks
• Carrot and celery sticks
• Green pepper sticks
• Zucchini circles
• Radishes
• Broccoli spears
• Cauliflowerets
• Unsalted rice cakes
Hot Stuff
• Clear soups - homemade vegetable or tomato (commercially canned soups may be high in sodium)
• Cocoa made with nonfat milk
Munchies
• Unsalted sunflower seeds
• Whole-grain breads
• Mozzarella (part-skim)
• Ricotta (part-skim)
• Plain low-fat yogurt
• Bagels
• Almonds, walnuts and other nuts
Thirst Quenchers
• Nonfat milk or buttermilk
• Unsweetened juices
• Tomato or mixed vegetable juice (commercially canned vegetable juices may be high in sodium)
• Unsweetened canned fruit
• Thin slice of angel food cake
• Baked apple
• Raisins
• Dried fruit gelatin gems
• Frozen Bananas
• Frozen Grapes
• Fresh fruit
