51: Healthy Snacks For Kids (and YOU!)

If you have a love-hate relationship with snacks (especially after school snacks!), this episode is for you!

While snacks can be a good part of a healthy day, they're often a source of stress, power struggles, and guilt for moms. This week, we're diving into how to reclaim snack time and turn it into a source of fun, health, and ease for the whole family!

Ashley gets real about the damaging ingredients in many popular snack foods and shares a roadmap to navigate snack time with confidence.

Plus, she's giving you a secret weapon to make it all a breeze.

Your Guide to Healthy & Happy Snacking:

🍎 Involve Your Kids & Get Creative: Say goodbye to snack-time battles by including your kids in shopping and prep, and get tips for making even boring snacks look irresistible.

🍎 Look at the Big Picture: Ditch the pressure of every snack being perfect. Instead, examine the context of your kids nutrition over 2-3 days, ensure a healthy balance of everything they need.

🍎 Remove the "I Don't Have Time" Excuse: Learn simple strategies to pack healthy snacks ahead of time on the weekend, so you can easily grab a pre-packaged, healthy option (instead of an unhealthy impulse buy!) on even the busiest weekdays.

Snacks don't have to be a source of chaos! With a little planning and a lot of creativity, you can ensure your family is fueled by healthy, delicious food that supports their energy and long-term health.

More Support For You

✅ Simplify snack time with the FREE Healthy After School Snack guide, with 50+ healthy snacks you can buy!
✅ Need support with the other meals of the day? This healthy meal plan is designed for midlife moms, but is guaranteed to work for the whole family!

Transcript

Today we are talking about something that honestly I have this like love hate relationship for, and I think you can probably agree with me. It's snacks. know, I personally, I really love snacks. I like to include snacks as part of my day. And I think they're a great way to help you feel like you're having something extra or special in your day, especially when you stick to a really clean, healthy meal plan.

The reason that I have this like hate relationship with snacks is that if you have kids in school, you know that snacks can be a huge source of arguing and frustration.

If you have kiddos in elementary school, there's like one or two snacks that need to go with them to school during the day. And then of course there's always afterschool snacks. And then if you have teenagers, you know that your teens want to come home and just gobble up everything like Cheetos and Doritos and Takis and soda. And then they're not hungry for dinner, but then they're hungry at nine o'clock at night when they want more snacks. So annoying.

Snacks can be a good thing, but I know that they can also be a drain on your mental load as a mom. So today we are going to dig into snacks.

And stick with me, even if you don't have kids or you don't have kids at home, because all of the things that we're talking about here today will apply still to you. If you're looking to include snacks into your daily routine, but you still want to keep them healthy. And that's the goal, right? Healthy food, whether it's a snack or a meal.

Now, I know there's not a mom out there who thinks, ⁓ just gonna let my kids eat junk food for snacks. I don't care. No. I know you wanna make good decisions, but then you get into this power struggle with your kids because they want the things that you probably see as unhealthy or as junk food. And you're trying to figure out like, gosh, how do I provide snacks and fill the pantry with things that my kids are going to eat?

without them feeling like all we have is a bunch of, I don't know, bird food in the kitchen. There is a way to find balance and I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that. But before we get into it, I wanna tell you about a free resource that I have for you, the Healthy Afterschool Snack Guide. And you can grab this right now in the show notes.

This guide is so amazing because it gives you over 50 items that you can buy for snacks that are healthy, low in sugar, free of all of the damaging preservatives and ingredients that we see in a lot of popular junk foods today. And if you're like me, you just don't have a lot of time to make things from scratch. So this guide shows you exactly what you can buy and it gives you some really creative ways to put those snacks together so that your kids

actually get excited about their snack.

So be sure to grab that guide. The link is in the show notes and it'll just send right over to you.

All right, as moms, we try really hard to balance out what our kids are eating and snacks are that one area where kiddos of any age, it can really add up with artificial colors, artificial ingredients and things that are harmful to our kids. I have an episode coming up soon where I'm talking more about overall nutrition for kids specifically.

Because what we've seen in this country, in the United States, since the late 80s and the early 90s, food, just looks different. There are added ingredients that we don't see in the same foods in other countries. A lot of processed foods that we have include artificial flavors and colors. But did you know that those ingredients have actually been linked to hyperactivity and irritability?

So when you say like, you know, just gave my kid a bag of &Ms and they started acting bananas,

It may very well not be the sugar, which is often what we attribute it to. It could very well be the artificial colors and the artificial flavors. But those hidden sugars, those can also be the culprit. Things like high fructose corn syrup, which you hear a lot about, but you hear less about, dextrose and sucrose.

All of these are linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes, but they also damage your gut microbiome and can impact and give you poor concentration. So we don't want our kids at risk of becoming obese or having type 2 diabetes just because of the food they're eating. Another thing I'm really passionate about looking out for these days is the preservatives that are so damaging.

So the ones that you see often in like Takis or Doritos, like processed chips, it's called TBHQ. And that preservative along with others like sodium benzoate, BHA or BHT, those have all been linked to hyperactivity, but also to hormone disruption and impaired brain development. We don't want our kids having these ingredients. They aren't healthy.

And now that I'm going through my own breast cancer journey, I will do everything possible so that my kids, your kids don't experience what I'm going through. And if we can do that by helping them improve their diet today, why wouldn't we do that? I know it takes a little bit of extra effort and I am making that easier for you,

but we don't want to give our kids foods that increase hyperactivity and inflammation, damage their gut, and perhaps cause issues with their brain development. We don't want to do that with their food. So that is why I'm really passionate about the nutrition that we do give to our kiddos. And I know, I get it, it's not always easy. I have a six-year-old and a 23-year-old. I know how teenagers are when they want to eat whatever it is that their friends are eating. And six-year-olds,

I know they're sometimes super picky. So we have to work with our kids. And this is the first tip that I want to give you when it comes to snacks. You have to get your kids involved.

it's so important to have them help you shop for snacks and prepare the snacks so that they can actually get excited about them. One of the things that you need to recognize is that our kids, when they're at school every day, they are managing so many different things. They're managing different classes and education, new learning. They're juggling, most importantly, these relationship with friends and they need to know that they belong. So,

If you're sending your kid to school with snacks that don't look like the other snacks that the other kids have, that can actually interfere with your kiddo's sense of belonging.

Recently, I've been rewatching that show Gilmore Girls and this kind of makes me think about a character on the show. Her name is Lane Kim and she's Korean and her mom sends her to school with tofu sandwiches that are packed with homemade kimchi. And if you've ever smelled homemade or regular kimchi, it has a really strong smell. So there Lane is sitting in the cafeteria eating with her friends and they're all thinking like, ugh.

You have like the stinky sandwich. It's so weird. What are you eating? Honestly, that can really impact her sense of belonging. So the most important thing you can do when it comes to snacks and afterschool snacks is for your kids to get involved, honor and respect their opinions and what it is that they want. If they say, ⁓ I really, really want Pringles, say, okay, I don't really love the ingredients in Pringles.

Can we look for a suitable alternative? And I know it can be hard at first. There's not always this like one-to-one relationship between something that's unhealthy and being able to find a healthy alternative. But when you work with your kids and you take them shopping with you, you're actually gonna get their buy-in at the store. Sure, you will probably try some things that they don't like and that's okay. Cause you can continue to refine the list of what they are going to eat, what they like.

and what you think is healthy. So together, you're working to make and create snacks that are suitable for both of you that you both can feel comfortable about.

The second thing we're gonna talk about in terms of snacks is that they are not the only part of your kiddo's day. So a couple of years ago, I was having a lot of trouble feeding Suraya She's my now six-year-old. And she honestly, she's pretty much always been picky. She struggles with different textures. And so with that, she doesn't eat a lot of variety.

And that is really hard for me because I eat a huge variety of food and I really just expected her to do the same. I want you to remember that snacks are just part of what our kids are eating all day long.

So when I was working with Suraya, I started looking at what she would eat over a day or two or three day period, not just in each meal.

This is not typically what we do as moms. When you sit down at the dinner table and you want your kids to eat veggies and some sort of protein and some carbs, and then of course, you you want them to drink their milk, you're only focusing on that one meal. It's really important to make snacks part of the overall nutrition within a two to three day period so that you can keep an eye on what your kids are eating. And then you can figure out how you can add in things to the snacks.

So that in a two or three day period with snacks plus meals, your kids are getting balanced nutrition when it comes to the carbs that they need for energy and healthy fats, which they need for brain development and protein, which gives them energy and builds their muscles.

it's really easy to just hone in on their snacks and say, ⁓ that stuff is so unhealthy. But by making some small adjustments and little tweaks, you can start to understand that like over two or three days time, how those snacks are playing into their carbs, proteins, healthy fats, and to be sure that they are getting exactly enough of what they need. So looking at nutrition from this perspective over the span of two or three days,

really helped me to feel more calm and at ease with what my kiddo eats every day because I'm not constantly worried that she doesn't have enough calories or that she's not eating enough protein because when I looked at it and I tracked food for two or three days, I realized that she's actually getting enough between the yogurt that she's eating, the chicken strips that she really likes, the roasted potatoes that I made.

and that like healthy grain free cereal that she has in her snack bag every week.

I can see that she's getting enough nutrients and enough of what she needs. It's just over a couple days time.

All right, so we've talked about why it's so imperative to give your kids healthy snacks. And I think we can all agree that's really important. Getting your kids on board and having them shop with you and prep the snacks, that's also really helpful. And then looking at how snacks fit into the larger concept of nutrition for your kids. So when it comes down to getting the right snacks out the door,

The best thing you can do for yourself is to pack snacks ahead of time. Just think about it. How many mornings are you running super late, you're running out the door, and the fastest thing to grab for a snack to tuck into your kiddo's backpack or lunchbox is like a power bar, a granola bar. There's not really many other options because you didn't have anything prepped ahead of time.

This is where I encourage you to get those snacks packed ahead of time on the weekend. So every Sunday I sit down with Suraya and we actually look at the calendar and say, okay, you need two snacks for every day during the school week. And then you've got dance two nights this week. So we need at least two more snacks. So right there, that's 12 snacks. And then we standardize. The morning snack is usually the same. And then the afternoon snack is also the same.

This way I can prepare five morning snacks and five afternoon snacks. And then she's got dance. So I'll probably do two snacks that are a little bit different that will be ready to go.

Right now, one of our favorite things to do is what we call snack mix. So we take a bunch of different things, crackers, sweet things, dried fruit, cereal, and we put all of that into a plastic baggie. And Suraya knows that's one of the snacks that she can grab. I usually pair that with either a yogurt or an applesauce, and she's good to go. And she knows what she's having for snack in the morning. Now keep in mind, all of the things that I'm talking about putting in her snack mix,

I have linked easily for you in that healthy afterschool snack guide, which you can download it in the show notes.

We're taking a lot of the things that are store-bought but still healthy and free from all of the ingredients that I don't like and that aren't healthy for our kids. That's what we're putting into the snack bags.

The other thing I like to do is I try and have a couple of homemade or kind of homemade things for the week. But if you're anything like me, I do not have a ton of time to just sit around and make Suraya her own granola bars and protein balls. I don't have time for that and I don't think you do either. So I usually will either make some muffins or like this week in particular, I made brownies. I really like the simple mills.

baking mixes, they're gluten free, dairy free, and they don't have any of those harmful or really unhealthy ingredients that we're watching out for. But when you make these muffins or these brownies, I want you to go one step further, okay? Don't just put them in a container. I need you to wrap each one individually so that as you're headed out the door in a hurry, you don't have to grab a packaged power bar or granola bar that's filled with a bunch of harmful ingredients.

Because you've prepped ahead, you can grab a muffin and an applesauce. And because that muffin's already wrapped and ready to go, it's easy. So a little bit of planning ahead is going to take you so far during the week and being able to quickly grab something and get yourself and your kiddos out the door on time.

Now, when it comes to preparing your snacks ahead, I need you to make it fun. This morning, I sent Suraya off to school with a yogurt parfait. So it's just layered fruit and yogurt and some honey. And you can put that in a Tupperware or something, that's fine. Maybe your kid will eat it that way. But for Suraya, I went online and I ordered cute little ice cream cups that are different colors with polka dots. And they have lids and matching colored spoons.

So she's going off to school with the yogurt parfait, which is healthy, but it's in a red paper cup with bright white polka dots, a lid and a matching red spoon. She is gonna be so much more excited about eating that than if it was just in the same old Tupperware that maybe had last night's spaghetti in it. So get creative. Even fresh cut fruit is going to look more exciting when it's in a cute container.

In the after school snack guide, I linked to some really fun packaging options for you. I linked to those cups that I talked about. And I also have these amazing reusable bags that are lined with a waterproof material that's food safe, but it's also washable. So this is a bag that could replace all of your plastic Ziploc bags that you use. And what's cool is they come with tons of fun prints on the outside. So definitely check that out in the guide, but

Get creative with how you are packaging your snacks for your kids. And again, it is different if you have a kiddo in elementary school versus a kiddo in high school. I get that. But this is where you need to get your kids involved.

You can say, hey, do you like these cups? Would you like these for your yogurt parfait or your fresh fruit? Would you take these cute bags with you for your snack mix during the day? Get them involved and then package up those foods so that they look really exciting and enticing.

All right, my last tip for you around healthy afterschool snacks is to stop making excuses. And I know I may not sound very friendly in saying that, but I need you to dig deep and really think honestly about how you are positioning snacks in your house and for your kids.

You might be the person who says, don't have time to make healthy snacks from scratch. I just don't have time. So I'm just going to kind of get my kids whatever I want. Or maybe you're the mom that says, you know what? I'm tired of the hassle. I've tried a few things that I've brought from the grocery store. My kids just don't like any of it. We have to stop leaning into our excuses. Like I talked about at the beginning of this episode, so many of the ingredients in prepackaged, processed,

unhealthy snack foods, they're damaging our kids, hurting their gut health, creating concerns around obesity, type two diabetes, increased blood pressure and hyperactivity. Some of these ingredients have been shown to cause issues with proper brain development. We don't want our kids eating those ingredients. So let's take out those excuses.

And honestly, this free guide that I have for you, it takes away all of your excuses because even if you don't have time to make things from scratch or do a ton of shopping, I get it. I don't either. I work full time, I do laundry, I walk my dog twice a day. I have a busy life too. I don't bake from scratch every week either. But I have found these ways to create healthy options for my family so that I can feel good.

they'll get excited about the snacks and I know that they're eating what's going to serve them best and not damage their health now or in the future.

So it's time to remove those excuses and to make it easy, I am giving you over 50 different things that you can buy for your kids that are good. My kids have tested them and they enjoyed them. The guide also has five of our favorite things that we make ahead, kind of like making from scratch. So if you can do just a little bit of planning on a Saturday or a Sunday to get your snacks in shape for the week, get everything packaged up individually,

so that it's easy to grab during the week, you will be out of excuses.

And once you've gotten your kids on board, you know that they're going to enjoy some of the new foods and they'll hopefully start making transitions away from some of those unhealthy options over to snacks that are going to serve them better.

So if you're feeling more excited and hopeful about snacks and healthy afterschool snacks, I want you to be sure and download this free guide. Over 50 things that you can buy for your kids that are healthy alternatives and healthy options for afterschool snacks. I really hope that this has been a useful episode for you. You know, here at the Family Fork,

I believe that healthy nutrition starts with you and you can help your family to get on board too. All it takes is some creativity and planning ahead and I am just handing you all of the tools that you need to make that happen.

All right, my friend, thank you for tuning in today. I am so excited to see you back here next week. Same time, same place.