Growing kids eat a lot of snacks, because active kids need energy! Sometimes it’s easier to reach for a bag of cookies, crackers, or chips than take the trouble to dream up something healthy and yet still tasty enough to tempt your children. But healthy snacks don’t have to be full of fuss-and-bother, if you plan ahead.
Check out these 5 healthy treats for kids.
Eat Like The French: Cheese And Fruit
A standard French meal, stretched out over 2 or 3 hours, usually ends in a fourth course of cheese and fruit. The mellow taste of cheese combined with the sweetness of fruit has long been a perfect culinary combination.
Teach your kids to love the same by combining cubes of their favorite cheese–mild Gouda, mellow Gruyere, or sharp cheddar–with pieces of fruit on a wooden skewer. Try odd mixes, like Gouda with grapes or creamy gruyere with tart pineapple. They’ll love the snack-on-a-stick idea, and they’ll be getting lots of protein, vitamins, and healthy complex carbs.
Frozen Yogurt Fruit Parfait
It’d be great to be able to whip up a yogurt-and-fruit parfait to take the place of a sugary ice cream in the midst of a hot afternoon. But who has time to spend in the kitchen, layering ingredients?
Instead of worrying about the look of the parfait, just mix fresh fruit, yogurt, wheat germ, and/or granola and fill up some ice-pop molds. Nothing could be more refreshing than an ice pop after a hard day’s work in the local playground, and this fills your kids with calcium, antioxidants, and plenty of energy to make it to dinner.
Whole Grain Toast And Almond Butter
Almond butter is full of protein to help your children feel full until the next meal. If you’re not at home, you can keep a jar in your bag along with a sleeve of whole-wheat crackers for a snack on the fly. Whole-grain cereal products offer young bodies complex carbohydrates, so your kids will be able to race from one end of the playground to the other at top speed.
Crudité
It’s always tough to get kids to eat their cooked vegetables at dinner, but fresh vegetables offer a crisp crack with every bite. Using colorful slices of red, yellow, or orange peppers, along with the traditional carrots and celery, can help tempt them. Also, try jicama for a mild, crisp taste that no child can ignore, and serve with a variety of dips like hummus, salsa, or tahini.
Homemade Oatmeal Cookies
What kid can resist a cookie? If you make them at home, you can control what you put in them. Check out recipes on line to see how you can use rolled oats, whole-wheat flour, and applesauce instead of white flour and butter. Add dried cranberries and nuts to give them an extra healthy kick.
