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Healthy Snack Checklist
Tara DelloIacono Thies
Thursday, June 18, 2009
My son and I were out and about when SNACK TIME came upon us. I opened our trusty grab bag to find a petrified orange, a trap of stale pretzels and an empty sippy-cup. Yikes! Since that day I promised to keep the bag stocked with some healthy packaged snacks that would hold up in the bag, ready to be eaten when we needed them.
Obviously, cheese sticks, yogurt, and fresh fruit don’t do well hanging out in a bag meant for a rainy day. You need something in a sealed package that doesn’t need refrigeration to serve as part of your grab bag of emergency snacks. This means finding natural and nutritious snacks that come in a package.
Packaged foods are convenient to stash in the glove box, a diaper bag, or a desk drawer. Foods in a package can be as healthy, natural and nutritious as fresh foods. Let me help you spot the best choices by showing you what to look out for on a food label.
As you are reading, pull a snack food package from your pantry. First, flip the package over and look at the ingredient list. Does it have ingredients you recognize as healthy or that you may even have on your shelf for cooking? If you see Blue 1, Red 40 or artificial flavorings, back away now.
Artificial colors, flavors, and non-natural preservatives are not ingredients you need in your food or body, nor do they have any nutritional value. Foods made with natural flavors and colors that come from the ingredients themselves are your best choice.
Other ingredients that are also a total turn-off are partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup. Partially hydrogenated oils come with trans fat as a by-product that has no nutritional place in a recipe. When it comes to sugar, using more natural sweeteners will provide better taste with less sugar per gram, making it easy to enjoy the sweet benefits without overdoing it.
Does the package claim the food inside is natural? When it comes to labeling, you will find the term "natural" to be quite subjective. The best way to back up a natural claim is to see if it is closely followed by the word organic. Finding organic ingredients on a package is the fastest way to identify a food that is made with ingredients that have not been grown through genetic engineering or with dangerous pesticides or fertilizers.
Second, there are details to take note of on the nutrition label. Here’s a line-by-line guide to understanding some important details in the nutrition label on the package:
Serving Size: Check the serving size, so you know what portion is being referred to. It may say one serving, but perhaps there are two in the package and you are certain they will both be munched down together.
Calories: Snacks should be moderate in calories providing 150-200 calories per snack.
Calories from Fat: Generally, you want 30% of calories in kids’ foods to come from fat. Plug this simple equation into your mobile phone calculator to determine fat percentages: Calories from Fat ÷ Total Calories = % Calories from Fat.
Fiber: Kids need fiber to keep the digestive tract clean. Kids should snack on foods with 3 grams of fiber or more per serving, which can be found in whole grains like oats and whole wheat flour.
Sugar: On a food label, this refers to both added sugars (like organic cane juice) and naturally occurring sugars (like lactose in milk). Be sure to weigh the balance of sugar to the other nutrients provided in the food. Ideally, a snack should be less than 35 percent of its total weight in sugar.
% Daily Values (DV): The %DV makes it easy to see which foods are higher or lower in nutrients. When you are comparing similar foods, be sure you are comparing similar serving sizes too.
Sodium: Kids typically need only 1,200 milligrams of sodium per day. But, on average, they consume more than twice that – 2,800 milligrams each day – according to the Institute of Medicine.
If you were to open up my "ready-for-any-snack-time" grab bag today, this is what you will find:
* 4 oz 100% organic juice box
* 20 gram 100% organic no-added-sugar fruit snack
* 4 oz cup of cinnamon apple sauce
* 8 oz shelf-stable 1% fat milk box
* 1 oz bag of mini organic cheddar cheese crackers
These foods all have 'best by' expiration dates, so be sure you eat on a first-in, first-out basis. Next time you are out and about with hungry toddlers and no food in sight, you will be pleased to have snacks like these on hand.
Our guest blogger is Tara DelloIacono Thies, RD, LUNA Nutrition Strategist at Clif Bar & Company.
Posted by Dentist Arcadia on 06/22 at 04:59 AM
This is indeed an informative post. This guidelines will help me prepare healthy snacks for my family.
Posted by Shekhar Sahu on 06/24 at 08:22 AM
Nice blog post… Healthy foods should meet the following criteria:
* Are good source of fiber, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.
* Should be rich in phytonutrients and antioxidants like vitamins A and E and beta carotene.
* May be able to reduce the risk of heart disease and the health conditions.
* They should be low in calories.
* Should be readily available.
Posted by Duong on 09/15 at 08:50 AM
Excellent. With obesity so high, it’s important that parents take charge of their kids health. Great tips and ideas as well as the calorie from fat equations. We all should put that into our notes in cell phone to use as needed.
Posted by Jill B on 09/15 at 09:41 AM
This is a great blog post. My only problem is that my daughter is allergic to apples and has lactose intolerance. So it can sometimes make healthy snacks tricky.
Posted by sandra on 06/21 at 07:55 PM
Thanks for the article. Healthy eating should be a priority especially for kids.