Healthy Snacking Habits

What are snacks?

Snacks are the small portion of food or drinks consumed between our main meals.

How are snacks determined?

Some snacks are determined by the consumption time in between the meals, and some are determined by the size of the served meal (portion size).

What are healthy snacks?

A snack that is not deep-fried, which doesn’t contain added sugars, salt, and caffeine, and a food preparation with an appropriate portion size and nutritionally dense is considered as a healthy snack. Snacks should be planned to meet the nutrients that we don’t meet in our main meals. Healthy snacking is known to be a public health necessity for developing strong immunity and protecting our bodies from viruses and other diseases. Healthy snacks can be mainly made using any one or a combination of food groups like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, and pulses.

What are unhealthy snacks?

Snacks that are high in energy and poor in nutrients are known to be “empty” calories and should be considered unhealthy. This promotes overeating in response to increased portion size, palatability, and energy density along with psychological cues motivating people to consume large quantities of snacks, which alters the energy balance.

Healthy snacking habit

Snacking and healthy eating habits have been suggested to have various health benefits such as appetite control, body weight regulation, and enhanced blood sugar control in adults.

The positive or negative impact of snacking on health is due to its nutritional content. Healthy snacks that contain whole fruit, vegetables, sprouts, and roasted nuts have been shown to be associated with enhanced diet quality and have a positive impact on body weight. On the other hand, consuming desserts, sweets, potato chips, bread, sugary juices, and deep-fried items were the major sources of energy intake from snacking. Similarly, energy-dense foods, such as cakes, buns, biscuits, and sugary drinks, are the main sources of snack energy among children. Frequent snacking on high-density foods contributes to increased daily energy intake, which could lead to increased body weight and low quality of nutrients.4 This is even true for people with illness and morbidities, who cannot consume sufficient energy from three meals per day and require frequent healthy snacking. Healthy Snacking contributes to increased consumption of micronutrients such as vitamin E, vitamin C, dietary folate, dietary fiber, calcium, iron, sodium, and magnesium. And hence choosing healthy snacks over unhealthy snacks contributes to overall good health.

Few Healthy Snack Options

1. Roasted Peanuts

2. ½ cup fruits (whole fruits, not fruit juices)

3. Roasted Nuts

4. Sprouts salad.

5. Rajma cutlet

6. Milk

7. Buttermilk

8. Plain lassi (No sugar)

9. Fruit with curd (Fruit curd)

10. Egg salad

11. Egg omelet

12. Date and nuts Laddu

13. Sundal

14. Kosambari

Foods like roasted nuts peanuts and moong dal can be flavored using lemon, green chilly, pepper, ginger, and garlic. Instead of using Salt.

Use methods like microwave, Baking, Dry roasting, and thawa roasting (using 1 tsp oil only) instead of deep frying.