Healthy Tips Video: National Nutrition Month

Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Beth, and I'm a snacker-- a super snacker actually, somebody that you might find snacking anywhere from three to four times a day. But I'm not alone. Around 95% of Americans today do some sort of snacking, and at least 70% tend to do it more than once a day. When we were growing up, we were always told not to snack, not to eat between meals because it would ruin our appetite.

But that's not so much the case anymore. It is more about finding healthy snacks. That's one of our biggest challenges, but it doesn't have to be that difficult. Sure, it's just so much easier to grab a bag of chips, a candy bar, run through the drive-thru, but I want to give you just a few quick tips today on how to make snacking a healthy part of your diet.

The key, I think, as with many parts of our life, is having a plan. We really need to plan our snacks just like we plan our meals, and we can plan to incorporate that within our daily limit for how much we're eating each day. I like to use the general rule of thumb to keep your snacks at about 200 calories. And it's also a good idea to incorporate sometimes more than one food group, and you'll find that it's even more filling. I actually have some good samples that I wanted to show you today, some of my favorite snacks.

Of course, vegetables and dip. We always hear about having vegetables for snacks, but we have to have them on hand, and they have to be prepared. You can make a low-fat yogurt dip and make that taste really good with those vegetables. That's perfectly fine. I love cottage cheese. And the protein with cottage cheese and whole-grain crackers is really going to fill you up. I also have these really cute kebabs, which are especially great if you have kids. They can help you put those together. And you could dip them in something like low-fat vanilla yogurt, and that would make a wonderful treat.

Of course, I love grapes. The cotton candy grapes taste like candy, but they're much healthier. Last night in my air fryer, I whipped up some of these chickpeas, and they're roasted. Delicious. They've got a seasoning. You could even add a little spice to that. And then another one of my favorites is just a homemade trail mix. And this is so much healthier than buying something.

This just has some whole-grain cereal, some pretzels. This is a savory one. But you could make one with maybe some Teddy Grahams, a few marshmallows, and some chocolate chips, and you've got a nice little sweet treat that's actually a lot healthier than things you might purchase already prepared and processed.

So other ideas, you can make a homemade pizza on, say, an English muffin, whole-grain English muffin. Peanut butter with apples and bananas is always a really good one. Lean lunch meat wrapped up in a wheat tortilla is also a really good treat.

So the bottom line is snacks can absolutely be part of our daily meal plan, and they can be healthy. But make them lively. Have some fruits and vegetables so you can add some color. And also, my key point for you today is to snack mindfully, not mindlessly. If you would like more information about this or any of our wellness services, please give us a call here at the Healthpark at 270-688-5433.