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Healthy Snacks - Tips for Parents
- Make sandwiches with lean meats, low-fat cheese, water-packed tuna, and skinless poultry. Trim visible fat from meat before serving. Reduce high-fat foods such as hamburgers, bologna, bacon, hat dogs, and salami.
- Replace a whole egg with 2 egg whites in a recipe. (It's the yolk that has all the cholesterol.)
- Make vegetables more appetizing to kids by stir-frying, steaming, or micro waving: they'll be crisp, tender, and healthier. Try pea pods, broccoli, carrots, jicama, ok Choy, celery, or whatever's in your refrigerator. Toss with plum sauce, sweet and sour sauce, or you-make-it-up sauce.
- Chill stews, soups, casseroles, and sauces. Skim off the fat before re-heating.
- Create a cold-pasta salad with pieces of raw or cooked vegetables, or leftover chicken.
- Make "Ants on a Log." Spread peanut butter on celery sticks or apple slices. Decorate with raisins.
- Use nonstick skillets instead of butter or oil when you're cooking. Sauté, stir-fry, or bake instead of frying or deep-frying. Use small amounts of oil in salad dressings and cooking.
- Serve baked potatoes with herbed low-fat yogurt; serve sweet potatoes without sugar, marshmallow toppings, butter, or margarine.
- Create dips with low or non-fat yogurt; or try cottage cheese with a little milk in the blender. Add bits of vegetables and seasonings such as parsley, dill, or basil.
- Make a fruit cooler by blending low or non-fat milk with ice cubes, fruit juice, and pieces of fresh fruit. Or, freeze pieces of fruit and then add them to low or non-fat milk. Serve right away or pour into fun-shaped molds and freeze for snacks.
- Make mini-burritos. Spread refried beans (vegetarian style, without lard) on a tortilla (made with vegetable oil, not lard). Add bits of lean meat, poultry, or favorite vegetables. Sprinkle with low-fat cheese such as part-skim mozzarella.
- Freeze healthy baked treats such as muffins, banana loaf, bagels, raisin bread, oatmeal cookies, fruit bars, or gingerbread so that when your child raids the refrigerator there'll be lots of healthy choices.
- For snacks, try banana slices dipped in whole grain cereals.
- Add cut-up vegetables to favorite foods to make them more colorful and healthful. For example, add zucchini or carrots to spaghetti sauce; add spinach to burgers or meat loaf; add broccoli or sweet peppers to pizza; add chopped carrot or parsnip to chicken salad. The leftovers are great for lunches or snacks.
- Make hot chocolate with non-fat or low-fat milk.
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