Our Top 5 After School Snacks

When my son started school, he wasn’t very good at eating his school dinners. In fact, to my horror, some days he’d come home having only eaten chips and cake.

It was then that I vowed NEVER to give my children sugary snacks after school again.

Then versus Now - Feeling Healthy

If you’ve read my post on Childhood Obesity you’ll already know that I was a very overweight child. Back then in the 80s, it was the norm to eat a sugary cereal for breakfast, a dessert at lunch, biscuits post school, plus pudding after dinner. The trouble was, this kind of diet got me used to running on sugar and refined carbs. It built a sweet tooth along with excess poundage. My skin suffered and my gut was a ship wreck.

I climbed a steep learning curve to kick these habits as a teenager which spurred me on to train as a nutritionist, and I’ve never looked back.

These days, we know a bit more about food and its relation to health. We know that white sugar and refined flour have no nutritional value. We know they are empty calories that use up our precious vitamin stores to be turned into energy.

We know that sugar and refined carbs have been linked to many degenerative and aging diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Furthermore, if your child is eating sugar and white carbs throughout the day, there isn’t a great deal of room from their 5 a day.

Yet despite this knowledge, it’s extremely hard to cut back on sugar.

That’s because sugar is EVERYWHERE.  

There’s the ice cream van at the park, playdates, picnics, holidays and birthday parties. Halloween sweets seem to roll into Christmas treats and before we know it, it’s Easter and all the chocolate that goes with it. Not to mention the aisles and aisles of sweets and chocolates that line our supermarket shelves every single day. It can feel like an ongoing battle.

In desperation when my kids were young, I resorted to bribery, for example,  ‘eat your veg, then you can have your treat’.

So when I introduced my NO SUGAR policy on Monday to Friday, I won’t lie, it was hard and I was met with a fair amount of resistance. But perseverance is a wonderful thing and they quickly got used to it.

Now they know what to expect and no longer ask for a treat when they get home.

Instead I encourage them to get creative in the kitchen. Mine are getting older, so they can make snacks for themselves, blending up a smoothie concoction or a veggie dip.

Why is it important to cut back on sugar and eat more fruit and veg?

Children go through multiple growth spurts of rapid body and brain development, and their vitamin and mineral needs are higher than any other time in life. It’s important to make sure our kids are eating enough fruit and veg to not only meet those requirements, but get them into good habits for the future.

For this reason, I’ve not only banned sugar during the week, but I always incorporate fruit and vegetables into their afternoon snack, and no pudding! Just some fruit and natural yoghurt if they’re still hungry.

So here they are… our top 5 After School Snacks

And it’s really nothing fancy…

Our Top 5 After School Snacks

1.      Veggie sticks and dips

I bought one of those party veggie dip dishes from a cheap store and for some reason it made all the difference. Whatever I put on it, seems to disappear. Sliced cucumber, carrots, bell peppers, apple, olives and sugar snap peas are favourites. In the middle goes a dip – generally hummus, smashed avocado, or yoghurt and mint.

2. Stewed fruit and natural yoghurt

Sometimes in the Winter, you just want something warm. Cook up some apples or a tin of pears or peaches in natural juice instead of sugar syrup.

Serve warm with a sprinkling of cinnamon and dollop of natural plain yoghurt.

Delicious! Live natural yoghurt is great for gut health and the immune system too.

3. Frozen Berry Smoothie

It’s easy to get fruit into your child when you whizz up a smoothie.

This one is simple; 300ml milk, large handful of frozen berries, 1/2 banana, 1 tbsp natural plain yoghurt (serves 2 kids).

I buy wonky imperfect frozen fruit found in the freezer department of most supermarkets. I think there’s nothing imperfect about them, they are still delicious and it’s a cheap way to eat berries all year round whilst minimising food waste.

Tinned fruit in juice (not syrup) are also a great kitchen cupboard staple.

Try a peach melba smoothie with tinned peaches and frozen raspberries with a little vanilla extract blended with plain yoghurt.

Make smoothies with less milk and they become almost ice-cream texture and can be eaten with a spoon. In the Summer these can be frozen into lollies.

4. Sliced apple and sugar free peanut butter

My personal belief is that life is better with peanut butter. All supermarkets do cheap large tubs of unadulterated peanut butter that has no added salt or sugar, simply nuts, blended. Sliced apple adds the sweetness that kids crave with the moreish peanut butter drizzled over the top, it’s a match made in heaven.

5. Buttered corn on the cob

Just that! Steamed corn on the cob with butter and black pepper. Warmed tinned corn is also delicious, sweet and filling. Adding some kind of fat to your veggies increases the bioavailability of the fat soluble vitamins – A, E and K.

The best thing about these snacks are that they leave room for your child to eat a healthy dinner. Plus you’ve already hit most of your 5 a day quota! Do you have a healthy afterschool snack your child enjoys?

More here on how to Increase Intake of Vitamins from your food.