Kids. As much as we love them to pieces, they are the leading cause of our concern. If they’re at home, all they want to do is watch YouTube videos, play video games, and eat. And not necessarily in that order. Of course, the only food they don’t want to eat is the healthy snacks for kids you have carefully prepared for them.
We have gathered fifteen healthy snacks for kids which you can feed without feeling guilty of weight gain. Read on!
Please note: Before we start, can I quickly point out that many of the snacks below contain food that may be unsafe to take to school or on planes. For example, consider avoiding nuts in the snacks below if you are traveling or your kids are going to take them to school.
Table of Contents
Healthy Snacks For Kids
1. Anything with yogurt
Kids love yogurt. That is a simple statement of fact. There are so many varieties that it is almost impossible to meet a child who doesn’t like yogurt. And it’s not just the yogurt itself that is so full of healthy goodness, it’s also what you can add, such as cereal, fruit, berries, and nuts.
2. Sandwiches
As long as you use ‘proper’ bread, rather than the nasty cheap stuff, sandwiches are wonderfully healthy snacks for kids. Peanut butter with jam is a favorite with kids and so easy to prepare, they can do it themselves. In fact, if you can persuade your children to make their own healthy snacks, half the battle is won.
3. Cookies
Making your own cookies is not only a great option but also a wise decision. The fact is that most mass-produced cookies are full of preservatives and sugar. Making homemade cookies means that you can control what’s in them. You can use rolled oats, nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, or anything else that is healthy.
4. Trail mix
The problem with most trail mixes bought from the shops is they have way too much salt for most parent’s comfort.
Homemade trail mix means that you can choose all the good stuff you want to use, nuts, dried fruit, and seeds, and avoid anything you don’t want. Of course, trail mixes are not only healthy snacks for kids but for the entire family, especially when out and about.
5. Anything with cheese
Cheese is another excellent food that can be used in many ways to disguise the healthy snacks for kids that you have prepared. Cut up cheddar, or any hard cheese, into smallish pieces and get the kids to use pretzels to stab the cubes of cheese to eat them. Healthy and good fun. What could be better?
6. Fruit salad
Fruit salad is easy to prepare, cheap, and a great way to get the kids to get all their required daily vitamins. You can’t really make fruit salad last more than a day; however, removing excess water will stop the fruit softening, and using lemon juice should prevent the fruit from going brown.
7. Mini pizzas
Standard sized pizzas are way too large for a snack, but making mini pizzas are excellent healthy snacks for children. You can use tomato paste and cheese for the topping. For the base, you can use the dough as usual, or you could use wholemeal bread instead.
8. Food on skewers
Why is it that if you offer children fruit, they invariably turn it down? Cut fruit into cubes and skewer it, and it suddenly becomes the best food in the world. Think about using fruit that goes well with cheese to mix things up a little bit.
9. Cakes
Cakes can be great healthy snacks for kids, but you do need to think about if the cake in question is healthy or not. For example, carrot cake sounds healthy but sadly contains a lot of fat and sugar. Do some quick research, and you’ll find the cakes that are right for your kids.
10. Greek yogurt
We’ve already spoken about yogurt, and we shouldn’t forget Greek yogurt either. Like its better-known cousin, you can throw pretty much anything in Greek yogurt to make it more interesting, but the fruit is an obvious choice.
11. Frozen yogurt
We haven’t quite finished with Greek yogurt yet. If you want healthy snacks for kids, that’ll keep them fresh in the summer, chop up some fruit, add it to the yogurt, put it into small air-tight containers, and pop into the freezer. Make sure you eat them within a month or so, or their flavor will be lost.
12. Vegetable Dips
Making healthy snacks for kids from vegetables is a great idea, but getting the kids to eat them is another idea. Creating dips for vegetables is a tried and tested method to get kids to eat up their vegetables.
13. Pepper cups
Pepper cups are marvelous fun for kids. Hollow out the pepper and add something that your children like. Tuna and mayonnaise is a perennial favorite for children and easy to do. Of course, the kids might not eat the peppers, but no plan is perfect.
14. Sweet potatoes
Another vegetable that can be used in so many ways is the sweet potato. One of the simplest ways to prepare them is to cut the sweet potatoes into strips, roast them, and then serve drizzled all over with honey. A healthy snack for kids that is very popular for children with a sweet tooth.
15. Vegetable smoothies
Finally, we couldn’t finish this article without a nod to the smoothie. While not exactly a snack, smoothies are very filling. You can also disguise vegetables like kale and spinach in a smoothie to fool children into eating their greens.
For example, mango, coconut milk, and green veg make for a delicious smoothie that all kids enjoy.
One of the biggest concerns we have as parents is how to persuade our little angels to eat the well-balanced nutritious food we have carefully prepared for them. The suggestions above should help you encourage them to eat healthy snacks for kids you have made for them without any of the usual arguments.
