Yikes, and here I thought that Bear Paws were not a bad choice as a snack….wrong of me.
Another eye opener was that sugar/glucose/fructose were second on the list of ingredients.
OK. I did some reading up, looking up on utube and other blogs on healthy snack ideas for kids. I found this great blog where the mom pre-packed her kids healthy snack in portions and put them in a bin in the fridge. Her children pick snacks for their lunch boxes from the bin.
I went ahead and separated the baby carrots, grapes and other fruits I had in the house and put them all in plastic containers / portion size. I did not label the bin with “SNACKS” as of yet, but I will. See picture attached.
Furthermore, I was reading ahead on another challenge called cooking with kids on Mondays. That has given me an idea to incorporate the kids in MAKING our snacks. So I pulled / am pulling out recipes for healthy cookies and muffins. My aim is to test try several recipes and see if we can find some . The bonus would be those items that freeze well, this way we could make and freeze and then each week, I could put a few pre-packaged portions of those home-baked snack in our refrigerator bin.
You will notice that I have “ficello” sting cheese in the snack bin at the moment. I believe it would be more economical and better for the environment if I simply purchase a large brick of cheese on sale, and then cut it up in snack sizes, packaging them again the plastic contains…all to be added to the snacks bin.
I was horrified when I looked at the ready to eat containers. Reading the ingredients has further encouraged me to add regular (low sugar) boxes of jelly to grocery list. We’ll make our own jello, preservative-free and much cheaper then the ready-to-eat ones.
Love these challenges. It is a push to be a healthier and better mom, thank you!
Julie Mansell