Healthy Snacks for Kids- Helping kids choose healthier snack foods tips and easy recipes

About Snacks | Kids' Snack Tips| Trail Mix Recipe| Enter Healthy Snack Giveaway

Snack food often gets a bad rap- this week we are working to change that, one healthy small change at a time together!  Here's some tips and resources for helping kids to eat healthier snack food.

Helping kids eat healthier snacks is our healthy pledge of the week and we have a giveaway for snack prize pack of Almond Travel Snacks.

NOTE: This weekly campaign has ended. Thank you to everyone who participated! Go to ​➪ New healthy goal pledge and giveaway for this week! Each week we share a new healthy goal and a new healthy tips sheet for parents or activity page for kids to support the goal at home or at school.

To support parents with this week's healthy pledge we have some creative healthy snack tips, a fun healthy snack food for kids PDF

Join us- take the healthy pledge and enter the giveaway! You'll get our healthy snacks pledge PDF with tips for kids snack food, and have chance to win this week's great prize!

A healthy snack prize pack of Almond Travel Snacks (value $50)

Each week, we will be sharing a new healthy change to make with children as part of our March to Nutrition Month, it's one small change each week- that can add up to health benefits for all kids!

About Kids and Snack Food

Did you know that planning healthier snacks is a great way to help kids get the nutrients and fuel to keep their body and brains working throughout the day?

Many children are eating too many snacks during the day or grazing on unhealthy packaged snacks while they watch TV or are online.

Unfortunately, many unhealthy snack food choices are promoted by food marketing companies, and children are often exposed to the ads throughout their day online, on TV and at the grocery store. 

We believe it's important to teach kids in engaging ways about nutrition and keep it FUN. That's right, let's making healthy snacking fun for kids.

It's important to keep it positive and teach them when they are young, because that is when they are developing habits that will last.

Together we can fight junk food marketing and unhealthy choices with healthy fun!  

It takes a partnership to combat all the unhealthy food choices and marketing, and we are here to support parents with tools and materials to help their children learn to make healthier choices- together we can help children make healthier choices- one snack a time!

How can we help children learn make healthier snack food choices?

Teach kids about the food groups and how to read food labels and how healthy foods help their body to grow, and be healthy and strong.

For parents we have a quick guide to the food groups and a list of healthy snack food ideas for kids organized by food group.

Keep it simple and fun- giving them 'bite sized' information over-time and bringing up the topic naturally in conversations is a great way to start.

For balanced nutrition try to pick food from 2 food groups for each snack.

Plan ahead for the week, or even a few days, for some healthy snacks- make a list and head the grocery store- you can even have the kids help find the food and read the food labels.

You're probably tired of hearing the phrase be healthy role model- so we can mix that up a bit by sharing this tip:

• Try being ' a bit overly-animated' when eating a healthy food about how delicious it is, or try to find opportunities where the kids see you choosing one healthy food 'over an unhealthy one' and discuss it with them why you choose the healthier food and leave it at that. Small healthy messages repeated over-time help children get the message.

Try to stay around the perimeter of the store or go to a local farmer's market to find fresh produce!

Buy some healthy ingredients and make your own snack packs together- kids can be great helpers: measuring, mixing, and cooking.

Get reusable snack or lunch boxes or bags, and have the kids help scoop or fill to prepare the snack packs for the next day.

Get creative - come up with fun names for healthy snack foods or let kids give their new snack creation a clever name.

Bring on the color! Kids love colorful food- make it a mission to find naturally colorful food for snacks.

Print our kids' healthy snack tracker page- a fun printable for younger kids to use to track their snack choices. See all healthy kids' goal trackers

See our chart of healthy snack food choices for kids organized by food group

Printable of snacks kids can help prepare- from our kids' cooking fun area.

More great recipes for cooking with kids from The Kids Cook Monday website

Here's some Healthy Snack Food Ideas for Kids

• Pack some protein in a snack with nut butter recipes or make your own nut butter- recipe
• Low-fat cottage cheese with fruit and sprinkle some ground flax on top!
• Try sunflower butter and fruit jam on whole wheat bread- use a cookie cutter to cut into a fun shape
• Whole grain rice cakes topped with nut or sunflower seed butter and jam
• 1/2 Egg salad sandwich on whole grain bread with a piece of fruit
• Peanut butter and apple (or banana) sandwich
• Yogurt with fruit and a few whole wheat crackers
• Hummus on a pita with thin sliced veggies
• Half a turkey sandwich with Avocado spread on 100% whole wheat bread
• String cheese, cut up fruit and whole wheat crackers
• Oatmeal or pumpkin muffin with fruit salad
• 1/2 pita with leafy green salad and a scoop of tuna
• Raw or steamed veggies, add low-fat Italian or Ranch dressing
• Trail Mix

Making Trail Mix Snacks with Kids

Get the kids involved and make their own Trail Mix- Not only is it a great way to teach your children about making a healthy snack but you can save some money making it yourself.

Depending on your mix, usually about 1/4 cup of trailmix will contain about 175 calories. So although it is packed with nutrition, you are not meant to eat handfuls of this. You really want to watch the portion sizes.

To help with portion control, you will need some small ziplock baggies to put your trail mix inside. Just put a 1/4 cup of trailmix into the small baggie and it is perfectly portioned for a healthy snack. You can add to your child's lunchbox or as an after school snack.

Here is a list of common ingredients to choose from and then just mix it together in a bowl. And whaa la! you have trailmix. And even young kids can help with this recipe.

Tip: Choose raw or roasted nuts so it is lower in salt and fat.

Choose from: * cashews, * dried cherries * almonds * walnuts * dried apricots * dried cranberries * roasted almonds * dried ginger * sunflower seeds * spicy wasabi peas * pecans * raisins * dried figs * seeds

Add these as just sprinkles to liven up your trail mix (as desired)

* dried fruit- such as apples, banana, mango * dark chocolate chips * milk chocolate chips * coconut flakes * peanut butter chips

More recipe ideas:

Printable of snacks kids can help prepare- from our kids' cooking fun area.

More great recipes for cooking with kids from The Kids Cook Monday website

Healthy Snack Giveaway:

Thanks to World Foods Dried Fruits and Nuts for supporting our free nutrition education website- so all families and kids can learn about nutrition and have fun!

Join this week's pledge for helping kids eat healthier snacks and get a printable healthy snack tips PDF + a chance to win healthy almond snacks packs ($50 value)

Enter to win here! Every entry gets our healthy kids snack food tips PDF

Sign up for our healthy giveaway e-news to be notified of each weekly giveaway or meet up with us on Facebook or Twitter- @kidshealthtips to find out the latest giveaways, new healthy games and printables for healthy kids and families!

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