How to Pick Healthy Snacks

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Brenda Thompson, registered dietitian and owner of Life Skills Nutrition. In this segment I'm going to talk about healthy snacks. Planning ahead to avoid extreme hunger that drives you to make poor choices is the best way to snack healthfully. Place nutrient dense foods in your office, car, and purse helps you get through those times when you are hungry and prevents you from making poor choices. Select snacks that contain two food groups helps you get a variety of food throughout the day. Here is a plate of options which is full of healthy snacks. Here we have some pita chips with hummus. These are called ants on a log which children love, but they're also fun for adults and the children in all of us. It has peanut butter and raisins, and then here we just have some crunchy celery. It actually takes more calories to chew celery than you receive from the celery, so that's an excellent snack. Here we have cheese. This is some low fat mozzarella and then cheddar cheese. This is really good too if you want to add to a small whole wheat tortilla and throw it in the microwave and melt it a little bit, that's an excellent snack. These are two choices of trail mix, this one has some nuts, and seeds and dried fruit. This one has a little bit of chocolate in there, so that if you have a sweet tooth, that's a really good way to go. However, you do want to watch the amount that you're eating. This is about two serving sizes. So a very small handful is one serving size of trail mix. These are some mini bananas, which are great. You can unpeel them, put them in the freezer, maybe put a little bit of peanut butter on top. Again, here is some options of fruit, dried fruits and nuts. These are dried cherries, which are wonderful with walnuts. Peanuts and raisins, which are a big hit with kids. Pistachios are fun because they take you a little bit longer to get into. So sometimes when you just want something a little bit crunchy, fresh fruit is always a great option. And then we have some other assorted nuts here on this side. One of my favorites is combining carrots and tomatoes together. It's a really good, healthy snack and very low calorie. With the carrots you can also make a homemade, low fat, ranch dressing using milk so you get some calcium there. So those are some low fat options. Selecting some of these low fat options will help you be successful in losing weight and will keep you from eating high sugary snack foods that often have a lot of calories and very little nutrients. "