“Healthy” Store-Bought Snacks For Kids
“Healthy” Store-Bought Snacks For Kids
I often get asked what kinds of snacks do I give my kids so I thought I would give you some options.
First of all let me preface this with some honest behind the scenes which I am sure you can relate with.
So, I had my first baby (Nicholas) and of course, life isn’t “as” busy with ONE child as it is with TWO or more. So with him things were a little different.
Nicholas didn’t really try anything “store-bought” until he was about 2, and I packed his food everywhere we went until he was about 4. I think he tried his first slice of pizza at about 3 1/4-4 years of age. Pretty crazy when pretty much every restaurant has pizza in the kids menu. But because all the restaurants have such poor choices in the kids menu, I always cooked his food and took it with me. I actually still do this for my daughter who is as of the date of this post almost 18 months.
As a baby 12-24 months, for snacks, Nicholas would have fruit, nuts, home-made fruit puree’s………. He really didn’t start having store-bought snacks until after that.
My daughter, well, that’s a different story.
Now having TWO children, and a growing business, life is a heck of a lot busier and crazier. Not to mention the fact that the baby (Anabelle) wants to do and eat everything that her brother does. So you can imagine that Anabelle’s experience has been totally different than Nicholas’.
She is 18 months and she has already tried pizza, and she has been eating “store-bought” snacks for a while. LOL
It’s really hard to prevent that from happening round two unless you want to be fighting all the time, screaming, and hearing crying all day long.
As for me, I decided to kind of go with the flow this time. For the most part Anabelle eats very healthy. I cook all her meals and they are all super healthy. I use my Eat To Be Fit Healthy Recipes Book on a weekly basis to cook and I also even follow my own MMF Healthy Meal Plans, which a lot of you are currently doing right now as well. So if she has a few store-bought snacks, I am no longer going to FREAK 😉
So, I have just found some healthier options which is what I want to share with you today.
First of all, I still do give her most of the time FRUIT for snacks and she loves it, but when we are out and about, these are some of the snacks I carry with me.
I am going to give you some options for BABY’S and then some options for TODDLERS.
I have both at home right now (18 months and 5) so I have both of them.
I will also, at the end give you some recipes of HEALTHY “HOME-MADE” snacks that I make for myself that both my kids like. When they both like them, then I know its a successful one. So I always have some of these made and in my fridge so I can take on the go and have some healthier options sometimes.
Healthy Store-Bought Baby Snacks
Plum Organics Little Yums: these are little wafers that are made misty of rice flour with slim to none grams of sugar and loaded with greens powders.
Plum Organics Teensy Fruits: these are made of organic fruit purees but they do have some organic fruit juice concentrate which makes it a little higher in sugar, but the pouches are really small and they are yummy for a more on the “sweet treat”.
Plum Organics Puffs: These are a great first snack. They melt in the mouth and they are made with whole grains and organic veggies and fruit, with 14 essential vitamins and minerals. Yum!
Happy Yogis: These are little yogurt chips made of organic milk and different flavors have different fruit puree’s. They have live active cultures which is good for the baby’s digestive track.
Happy Munchies: these are baked organic cheese and grain snacks and I feel better about these cheese snacks that of course all kids like because they are made with whole grain corn and they have no added colors, preservatives or flavors and they are unsweetened and they have 2 flavors Carrots and Greens.
Organic Rice Cakes: you can pretty much get any brand. But these are great. I always get the plain kind and will smear some mash bananas on them and they are great. They are crunchy and great for the baby’s for a nice CRUNCH.
Well, these are pretty much it until Anabelle was big enough to eat everything else Nicholas was eating. So now, though I still do carry these on-the-go type snacks with me for her, she sometimes just opts for whatever Nicholas is eating.
When the kids start getting bigger and start going to birthday parties and play dates and they are big enough to tell what the heck is going on…… It gets a bit harder because now they see their friends eating Doritos, and Granola Bars, and Cookies, etc so its hard to continue to give them the healthier options. So what I did, is try to find the HEALTHIER OPTIONS of what everyone else was having. This way he didn’t necessarily feel like he was missing out because his snack “LOOKED” very similar to what his friends were having.
And the trick is really to do this from the beginning and get them accustomed to the healthy options and when you can, explain why…….. Makes you smarter, stronger like Hulk LOL……..
Healthy Store-Bought Toddler Snacks
Cliff Bars: Nico loved these and I felt better about him eating these than candy bars, chocolate bars and other granola type bars that had worse ingredients in them. These at least have some protein in them, fiber , etc. I always stayed away from any PEANUT flavors as its a very high allergic food.
Z-Bars: these are like cliff bars for kids and have less sugar and better ingredients than the regular granola or breakfast bars.
Plums Organics Go Bars: I love these! These actually are made mostly of oats an have fruit and veggie blends in them, like apples, dates, sweet potato, carrots and kale. Nico actually loves these and at least I feel better about him eating some veggies in the bar than pure sugar which is what is in most other granola/breakfast bars.
Gluten-Free Pretzels: no real nutrition in these but when the other kids are eating cheetos and doritos, this does the trick and at least he’s not eating a ton of artificial flavors and colorings and its gluten free so not inflammatory to the digestive track.
Pirate Booty’s: these are great for when the other kids are also having Doritos, Chips, etc. At least these are gluten free as well and made of organic corn.
Muller Greek Yogurt: I always have these in my fridge. I get the ones with almonds to give him some extra healthy fats. The almonds are sugar coated but he doesn’t eat very high sugar at all so a few grams of sugar isn’t bad. He loves this for a snack during the week when we are home.
I hope this helps and gives you some options of store bought snacks that you can feel a little better about.
The truth is that no matter how healthy you are or want them to be, you can’t keep them in a cave. And though I wish they would never eat these things, they see their friends eat them and when you are out and about and you can’t eat out in the streets and they want a snack and that snack will buy you a few minutes in peace to get your errands done, then these snacks work well.
This is just the honest truth and maybe OTHER HEALTH AND FITNESS PROFESSIONALS will not advocate some of these, they are just plain out not being honest or don’t have kids of their own. Because I remember being there…… Saying I would never give my kids that stuff, but when you have them, and they are exposed to this world, its a totally different ball game.
So I do the best I can and I’m just being honest about it.
I feed my kids home made organic food most of the time and pretty much for every single meal except one or two when we eat out on the weekends. And when we are home and we can do fruit or nuts or yogurt, we do, but when we are out and they want a snack and I need some peace, well, its the above snacks I rely on.
I promised you I would give you some of the healthy snacks that I make for myself that my kids like too, so here they are. You have to try them. Some of them, Nicholas actually asks for. So of course, I make them all the time.
I, myself follow my MMF Healthy Meal Plans so in there we cook healthy snacks for the week so I change them up to find the ones the kids like as well.
Raw Brownie Bites : Nico loves these
Flourless Protein Chocolate Chip Cookies
I have tons and tons of really yummy and healthy recipes on My Pinterest Page, so make sure to go there and hit FOLLOW ALL so you can have access to all my recipes and be able to find the ones that you and your family and kids like. There are so many, so many different flavors, textures, etc. That I am sure you will find your go-to’s.
Make sure to also follow me on FACEBOOK as I post new recipes there on a weekly basis.
And if you want to get HEALTHIER also and you feel stuck, here is something to help you.
It’s a list that I compiled of the 5 FOODS that you should absolutely get rid of in your diet if you would like to see any kind of results. Because eating these foods cause so much inflammation in your digestive system that its close to impossible to lose weight. I also have a list of 5 FOODS that are crucial for you to include in your diet and your kids if you want to be able to burn fat and build lean muscle and overall be much healthier.
I will give these PDF lists to you and a video with what I have found to be the 5 BEST ABS EXERCISES. The ones that I have done to get ABS that I never had before (after 2 babies). Go to this link to get all of this for FREE: PDF & ABS Video