By Ocean Robbins • Adapted from Ocean Robbins’ book, 31-Day Food Revolution. Get your copy here now.
The journey of a thousand miles, the old saying goes, starts with a single step. Over the course of a lifetime, steps add up to shape destiny — for good or ill.
Of all the small steps we take, the cumulative impact of snacks may be the most deceivingly significant.
So, having some healthy snack ideas on hand is an excellent way to stay on track.
How Much Do You Snack?
I have a friend who eats healthfully for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then figures it’s okay to cheat a little around snack time.
She has a point. After all, it’s what you do most of the time that matters. A doughnut now and then won’t kill anyone whose overall dietary pattern is sound.
But the trouble is, many people snack so much that the “exception” becomes the norm. A single 5-ounce package of my personal nemesis, potato chips, for example, can deliver more than 750 calories. This is about a third of the total daily recommended calories for an average semi-active person.
And not to brag, but when it comes to potato chips, I turn into a world-class multitasker. I can focus my attention on whatever else is going on at the time — while I mindlessly stuff them into my mouth without even noticing.
That small bag of chips can undo the benefits of my otherwise healthy diet. Not everyone has the means to eat super healthy three times a day like I do, which makes the quality of your snacks even more important.
So, if you snack, it’s best to find snack foods that pack a health-giving punch. Snacking, when done mindfully, can actually support your health goals.
Snacking Mindfully
Mindful snacking involves bringing awareness and intention to your eating habits. This way, you can enjoy your food and nourish your body at the same time. Instead of reaching for snacks out of boredom, stress, or habit, mindfulness invites you to take a moment to listen to your body’s hunger signals.
To cultivate an optimal environment for snack time, put away distractions like phones, TVs, or computers and focus solely on the experience of eating. Before taking a bite, observe your snack: its colors, textures, and aromas. This simple act of mindfulness can make even a humble handful of nuts or berries feel more satisfying.
When you eat, take small bites and chew slowly. Notice the flavors and how they change as you chew. Pay attention to how your body feels, stopping eating when you’re satisfied but not overly full. This helps prevent overeating.
Planning your snacks can support mindful snacking. Preparing portions of healthy options like cut-up fruits, nuts, or veggie sticks ensures you have something nourishing on hand when hunger strikes. A little bit of extra prep time can also reduce the temptation to grab junk food and fast food.
Mindful snacking is also about honoring your emotions without relying on food for comfort. One reason you might be prone to over-snacking is that you’re using food to fill an emotional need — a role it cannot play successfully. If you’re stressed or bored, try filling your time with a non-food activity like taking a walk or practicing deep breathing before deciding whether you still want to eat.
By bringing intention to your snacking, you can transform a mindless habit into a meaningful moment that supports your health and well-being.
3 Healthy Snack Ideas That Are Easy and Delicious
True confession: When I get the munchies, it’s rarely accompanied by a craving for raw kale or steamed broccoli. Like me, you may not always want to eat greens or other super healthy foods when you’re hungry. But if you aim to be healthy (even most of the time), you need to find snack foods that pack a health-giving punch.
Fortunately, there are healthy snack foods that can satisfy not only your sweet tooth but also your “salty and fatty teeth.”
1. Whole Fruit
Fruit provides a source of vitamins and minerals, dietary fiber, antioxidants, and other nutrients. The phytochemicals in fruit that give them their colors are also good for your arteries and digestion and can help fight cancer, obesity, and (despite their high sugar content) even type 2 diabetes.
Compounds in citrus fruit and fermented tropical fruits can promote healthy hair growth!
Because fruit has a lot of sugar, you might think it would cause unstable blood sugar levels. But for most people, this isn’t a problem. So why is this the case?
The sugars in fruit are not in a vacuum. They also come with fiber and other nutrients that slow digestion and enable your body to effectively regulate the influx of sugar.
Fruit juice, however, is another story.
By separating and throwing away the fiber-rich pulp, fruit juice is reduced to a refined product linked to blood sugar instability and the development of insulin resistance.
For most people, a little juice won’t do any major damage. Just keep in mind that eating whole fruit is where the real benefits lie.
A note on dried fruit: Dried fruits do have health benefits. But it’s best to find unsweetened and unsulfured dried fruit. And remember that dried fruit does have concentrated sugars, and it can be easy to overeat it. So, if overeating or balancing your blood sugar levels are challenges you face, you may want to avoid dried fruit or eat it only in small amounts.
Next time you want a snack, grab a fresh apple, pear, banana, orange, nectarine, pluot, mango, or peach.
2. Berries
Berries of all types provide critical minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols. In fact, they’re one of my favorite superfoods. (Yes, they’re technically fruit, but they’re so good for you that I think they deserve their own category.)
Perhaps I love berries so much because I would go berry-picking every summer right outside my front door. I grew up on a little island in Canada where I picked (and gorged on) wild blackberries, thimbleberries, and salal berries — and loved them all.
When they’re in season, berries are fabulous fresh (if you can forage for them or afford them). Out of season, you can find them (often more affordably) frozen or even dried.
You can add berries to salads, breakfast cereals, or smoothies. Or simply eat them by the handful. (Mindfully, of course!)
Berries aren’t just delicious, however. They also have a stunning ability to support your health.
One study published in the Annals of Neurology analyzed data from 16,000 women with an average age of 74. Those who consumed the most blueberries delayed their cognitive aging by as much as two and a half years.
The cost of treating Alzheimer’s is over $1.3 trillion worldwide and is expected to balloon to $2.8 trillion by 2030. About one-third of people aged 85 or older have contracted this devastating ailment.
One of them was my own grandma, Irma, who developed Alzheimer’s in her eighties. She’d always had a keen intellect and a stunning capacity for sarcasm. She possessed an extraordinary ability to remember, in lucid detail, every mistake anyone in the family had ever made. But by the end of her life, she could no longer even remember our names.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my grandma about berries and all the other things we’ve learned about how to prevent dementia. I’ll never be able to go back, but at least I can move forward and share this message with you.
Many foods have been found to help prevent Alzheimer’s — including greens, legumes, and whole grains. But berries are definitely high on the list.
And berries are good for your heart and blood sugar balance, too. A 20-year Harvard study of 93,600 women, published in Circulation, found that those who ate the most berries were significantly less likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes.
But what if you want something a bit more filling than fruit or berries?
What if you want a snack that will give you a sustained energy boost, can last for days or even weeks, and is easy to take anywhere without getting squished?
3. Nuts
Nuts have been a vital part of human diets for centuries. In 2016, an archeological dig in Israel found evidence that our prehistoric ancestors were eating nuts 780,000 years ago. Archaeologists discovered seven nut varieties and stone tools to crack them open. These tools, called “nutting stones,” are similar to those found in North America and Europe, which archeologists date back 4,000 to 8,000 years.
Nowadays, the nut varieties we can access have expanded substantially. In many places, you can munch on walnuts, almonds, pecans, Brazil nuts, pistachios, cashews, macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, and more — plus an honorary nut we call peanuts (even though they’re technically legumes).
You can enjoy nuts with a sprinkling of salt, in trail mix, nut loaf, or casserole, blended into nut milk, added to smoothies, prepared into nut “cheeses,” or even ground and made into pie crusts.
You can make nut or seed butter in a blender or food processor and get creative with complementary accents. Homemade peanut butter is delicious, but just wait until you’ve added a dash of cinnamon — that’s a new spin on an old favorite.
We’re only beginning to appreciate the full benefits of nuts. Research has shown they’re rich in high-quality protein, fiber, minerals, tocopherols, phytosterols, vitamin E, vitamin B6, folate, and phenolic compounds.
Epidemiologic studies have linked nut consumption to reduced rates of heart disease, gallstones, and obesity, as well as beneficial effects on hypertension and inflammation.
One study involving more than 9,000 North Americans found that, on average, those who ate nuts at least 5 times per week gained an extra 2 years of life expectancy. The nut eaters also experienced a 50% reduction in rates of heart disease risk.
That’s not all. A clinical study published in the International Journal of Impotence Research looked at what happened to men with erectile dysfunction who ate three to four handfuls of pistachios a day for three weeks.
These men experienced a significant improvement in blood flow through the genital area and significantly firmer erections. The researchers concluded three weeks of pistachios “resulted in a significant improvement in erectile function… without any side effects.”
Each year, Pfizer makes hundreds of millions of dollars selling Viagra. The company fears competition from rival drugs like Cialis and Levitra. Perhaps it should also be a bit worried about competition from pistachio farmers!
Any Downsides to Eating Nuts?
Surprisingly enough, considering how dense they are in calories, studies find a correlation between eating more nuts and weight loss — at least up to a point.
What is that point? An ounce of almonds (about 23 nuts), to take one example, has 163 calories. If weight loss is your goal, you might want to limit your nut consumption to no more than 1 serving (around ¼ cup or less) per day.
Nuts also contain phytates and tannins, which can cause gas or bloating in some people. If you experience this, scale back to a serving size that works for you. You can also try soaking or sprouting nuts for a couple of days and storing them in the fridge, making them easier to digest.
What About Seeds?
Seeds, from sesame to sunflower to pumpkin, are delicious and offer many of the same health benefits as nuts.
Some seeds, especially chia and flaxseeds, offer an abundance of a bonus nutrient — alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), one of the omega-3 fatty acids critical to your brain and cardiovascular health.
Nut and Seed Sprouting and Soaking Guide
Use the infographic below to reduce the antinutrients found in nuts and seeds and increase their nutrition (in the case of sprouting).
- Almonds: Soak for 8–12 hours. Sprout by leaving in a jar and rinsing every morning and evening for 2 or 3 days.
- Brazil nuts: Soak for 3 hours. Do not sprout.
- Cashews: Soak for 2–3 hours. Do not sprout.
- Hazelnuts: Soak for 8 hours. Do not sprout.
- Macadamias: Soak for 2 hours. Do not sprout.
- Pecans: Soak for 6 hours. Do not sprout.
- Pistachios: Soak for 8 hours. Do not sprout.
- Walnuts: Soak for 4 hours. Do not sprout.
- Pumpkin seeds: Soak for 8–12 hours. Sprout in a jar with a mesh screen lid. Rinse every 6 to 8 hours. Sprouts in 1–2 days.
- Chia seeds: Sprinkle chia seeds in a terra cotta dish, set it in a plate of water, and cover. Mist seeds on days 2 and 3. Sprouts in 2–3 days. Alternatively, use a linen cloth or cheesecloth on a plate or sprouting tray. Cover to keep the seeds away from light and mist daily. Sprouts in 2–3 days
- Hemp seeds: Soak for 6–12 hours. Sprout in a jar with a mesh screen lid. Rinse every 8-12 hours. Sprouts in 2–5 days.
- Flaxseeds: Sprinkle flaxseeds in a terra cotta dish or sprouting tray and generously spray with water. Do not soak the seeds. Cover with another dish or lid to keep the seeds away from light. Spray with water a few times a day. Sprouts in 5–7 days
- Sunflower seeds: Soak for 8–12 hours. Sprout in a jar with a mesh screen lid. Rinse every 6–8 hours. Sprouts in 1–2 days.
Roasted, chopped, and ground nuts and seeds go rancid more quickly than whole and raw ones. Rancid oils are pro-inflammatory and can even be carcinogenic, so it’s best to eat nuts and seeds fairly quickly or store them in the refrigerator.
If the nuts or seeds are flavored, check the list of ingredients to see how much oil, salt, spices, sugar, or whatever else was added. And if you’re allergic to nuts, as about 1 in every 200 people is, then of course, don’t eat them.
5 Healthy Snack Recipes
Simply grabbing some fruit, nuts, seeds, or berries is a fabulous — and super easy — healthy snack choice. But if you want to get a bit more creative with your snacks, you have a lot of other ways to eat these foods and other healthy options, too!
1. Rainbow Smoothie
If you love berries, this Rainbow Smoothie is a must-try! Elevate your go-to bowl of berries with this fruity, creamy, and berry-packed treat. With mixed berries, spinach, and chia seeds as the base, it’s designed to keep you energized and feeling great. Blended with banana, apple, and creamy peanut butter, this fiber-rich, phytonutrient-packed, and protein-filled smoothie is a nutritional powerhouse — perfect for snack time or whenever you’re craving a burst of berry goodness.
2. Ocean’s Blueberry Orange Muffins
Ocean has received many compliments on his Blueberry Orange Muffins, and you’re about to see (and taste!) why. Made with naturally sweet berries and orange, protein-rich crunchy nuts, and fiber-filled organic oats, these muffins make a nutrient-rich breakfast or on-the-go snack. Share them with family and friends for a fun and delicious way to enjoy the benefits of berries!
3. Autumn Fruit Chia Salad
Making a mixed fruit salad is a great way to enjoy a variety of fruits and a super tasty way to enjoy chia seeds, too! This super simple Autumn Fruit Chia Salad takes minutes to prepare (no gel time needed), so you can reap the plant-powered rewards of chia and colorful fruits even sooner. There is no need to keep this salad to autumn-specific ingredients; simply swap the autumn fruits with seasonal ones. Exchange strawberries for apples in the spring, mangos for clementines in the summer, and pomegranates for grapes in the winter. Create your own fruit salad blend and enjoy healthy snacking whenever a sweet craving strikes!
4. FRN’s Trail Mix
Super nutty, slightly sweet, and very delicious, this almond, cashew, pecan, and pumpkin seed-based trail mix has so many benefits wrapped up in a bunch of tiny little packages! Nuts and seeds have long been beloved as a part of a healthy diet due to their high doses of healthy fats, selenium, zinc, iron, magnesium, and protein. Plus, mindful nibbling on nuts and seeds can satisfy your crunch cravings, provide long-lasting energy, and feed your body the nutrients it needs to thrive. Make a batch early in the week so you have it to munch on all week long!
5. Super Seed Nut Butter Blend
The fun thing about nut butter is the endless possibilities for blends and additions! We’ve provided a base recipe featuring pecans and walnuts, but feel free to swap in your favorite nuts. You can do the same with seeds — add a mix or stick to one type. This Super Seed Nut Butter Blend makes a delicious snack with hearty fruits, crackers, carrots, and celery sticks. Plant-powered snacking has never been tastier!
A Final Word on Snacks
Snacking can be fun — not to mention tasty.
And considering that the average American now gets nearly 600 calories from snacks each day (the equivalent of a fourth meal), what you choose to snack on is pretty important.
For many people, snacks are the least healthy (and least consciously chosen) foods they eat. But when you surround yourself with healthy snack foods, you help make excellent food choices and your thriving health, the path of least resistance.
So here’s to happy (and healthy) snacking!
Tell us in the comments:
- Do you snack? What situations or times of day are you most tempted?
- What are your favorite healthy snacks or recipes?
Featured image: istock.com/Jelena990
