Healthy snacks for kids

I don’t know about anyone else but I really struggled to give my kids healthy, vegan snack food that they’ll like and consider an acceptable alternative to most of the additive laden rubbish available from the shops. It never fails to surprise me how even the most healthy looking snacks are full of utter crap! I’m also amazed at how the creators of these products actually get them past food standards!
I let my children have snacks that may not be considered super healthy but they’re pretty decent and far more nutritious than anything you can buy. We also make them ourselves at home so I have complete control over what goes into them. There are some things available as snack food for children that are so unbelievably bad the contents resemble ingredients for a complex scientific experiment! And these are definitely marketed at kids -They jump out at your children in their bright shiny wrappers, existing at eye-level height, the supermarkets know in the throes of a stressful shopping trip it’s sometimes not easy to say no…. This is one of the many reasons why supermarkets are best avoided at all costs.

Anyway enough of my ranting the whole point of this post is to share some really cool snacks with you for your kids. So, here we go

These are some of our family favourites
Apple spread with nut butter
Sweet potato fries
Hoummous with veg sticks or pitta bread (see photo)
Pretzels
Home made fruity granola bars (see photo)
Popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast
Frozen banana yoghurt
Kale chips with olive oil, purple corn and lemon juice (see photo)
Roasted spicy chickpeas
Apple sandwiches (Cut thick slices of apple and use a cookie cutter to cut a shape out of the middle, fill with chopped blueberries, raisins etc
Date balls (Chopped dates, coconut butter and a tiny bit of agave)
These are all pretty cheap and super healthy. There’s loads more you can make and if you got a dehydrater then you can make loads in that – although you can do perfectly well without one!!

I’m not saying don’t ever give your kids chocolate or crisps etc just check the ingredients. Slightly darker chocolate is great in moderation for kids and most of the time is vegan as it contains no milk. Crisps, particularly the baked kind are a pretty decent alternative. I found pretty quickly that my son stopped asking for the really sugary, brightly coloured sweets after a week or two. The craving just goes away and he can’t stand anything that’s over-flavoured now. His taste buds have been stripped back to how they were when he was a baby and just starting out with new foods……
I’d love to hear your snack food ideas and suggestions so please feel free to share any of them with me. ✌🌅br />