Healthy Snack Tips for Kids

With more and more kids today needing to eat healthy, choosing healthy snacks for your kids is vital to their health. For millions of kids, eating junk food and not being active enough has contributed to obesity and many children being above normal weight. With an increase in childhood diabetes and other health problems, establishing healthy eating habits can begin with healthy snack choices. Here are a few healthy snack tips to help you get started.

Keep it Sweet, Naturally

A great way to get your kids to enjoy healthy snacks is to serve them naturally sweet foods. Naturally sweet foods such as fruits are a great healthy snack. Since most kids crave sweets, let your kids eat fruits such as bananas, oranges, cherries, apples or other sweet fruits for snacks. You can even mix things up by adding in some yogurt or make them a fruit smoothie.

Make it crunchy

If your kids are like mine, they like to "crunch" on their food. A great healthy snack that has crunch is fresh nuts. Peanuts, walnuts, almonds and other nuts are a great healthy and natural snack that most kids can enjoy. Just be sure that your kids aren't sharing their healthy snack with other kids that might have an allergy to nuts. If you want to make this a little sweeter for a special treat, add some M&M's to it and make some trail mix.

The key to healthy snacks for kids is to stay away from lots of excess sugars, preservatives and calories. Most kids will eat healthy snacks if they are sweet tasting and especially if they have a say in what they like to eat. Let them help make the decision about what healthy snack they can eat, it will make it easier on both of you.

Breakfast for snack?

With more and more cereals becoming kid friendly, there are lots of healthy choices in the cereal isle of your local grocery lately. Most cereals that are made from corn, bran and wheat include nuts or honey as a natural sweetner. Probably the most famous naturally healthy snack cereal for kids is Cheerios. It is a great lite snack for your kids that is healthy and easy to serve to them. The biggest item here is to pick out a cereal that they would eat for breakfast with milk, and chances are that they will eat it as a snack also.

Final Thoughts

If your child is extremely picky and only wants junk food, one thing to consider is to give it to them. Not really, but there are many prepared snacks that look and taste like junk food that are actually quite healthy. Items such as granola bars, fruit roll ups and cheeses can be healthy snacks for your kids. The main point to consider with these types of snacks is to pay attention to the food labels. Check on the sugar content, calories and fat content, if any. Lots of these snacks are made with natural sugars and other healthy ingredients and are worthy of consideration if it will lead to opening your kids minds to other healthy snacks.