7 Healthy Snack Ideas for Kids – Quick & Easy

In my career of 25+ years of being a leading nutritionist, I’ve seen this consistent effort of parents, that their child undergoes optimum growth and development, and this is primarily based on the kind of nutrition the child receives. While fighting with the odds-on over information through the internet, relatives, in-laws, and consistent growth of westernization palette in Indian kids.

As we all know, children are very fond of snacking; thus, you need to focus on inculcating healthy eating habits in them from a young age. Children usually tend to gravitate toward snack foods and munchies such as chips, wafers, chocolates, and ice creams.

How Fast Foods Are Brainwashing Kids

Fast foods such as pizza, burgers, and fried chicken, have grown more popular than ever these days with home delivery being available just a tap away! These types of junk foods are found to be more appealing to children because of their addictive taste, attractive packaging, special offers for children, promotion through TV ads, and the huge billboards used for advertising these unhealthy foods. Parents need to realize that these types of junk foods if consumed from a young age can interfere with the process of growth.

DIY Snack Hacks for Craving

Instead of letting your child indulge in baked and fried snacks, there are far better, healthy snack options that are tasty and nutrient-rich and can be liked by kids.

If your child craves a burger or pizza, instead of going the easy way by just calling for it from a fast-food outlet, you can DIY (do it yourself) at home itself!

• Swapping out the Maida base of the pizza for a homemade wheat or Rava base is a good option to improve the nutritional content. Preparing the tomato sauce at home and using less cheese and more veggies as toppings would also be better. Making the burger patty at home using chickpeas, potato, and other vegetables, soybeans, or chicken and grilling or baking it is a much better alternative than giving the child deep-fried patties or frozen ready-to-make patties you see in the store.

• Soya cutlets are also a good protein-rich snack that can be served with a mint or coriander chutney.

• It might be a task to get your child to have their salads and vegetables, so you can incorporate them into different types of parathas or encourage them to have salads by preparing a colorful fruit bowl and adding sprouts or boiled eggs to the basic veggie salads which would help increase the protein content of the snack.

• They can also learn the names of new fruits and vegetables through their meals. Preparing a corn chaat or puffed rice bhel can help introduce the child to new textures and flavors too.

• A regular aloo paratha can be improved nutritionally by adding besan or paneer to the dough and can be served with curd. Other options include a moong dal oats cheela, using jawar, bajra, or ragi flours which have better nutritional content than maida or wheat flour.

• If your child craves something yummy and crunchy, a healthy snack bar that includes different types of nuts like almonds, walnuts, pistachios, oats, and jaggery can be prepared.

• Poha or rice flakes are common ingredients found in Indian kitchens. Apart from being a great breakfast option, it can also make for a good snack in the form of ladoos. You just need poha, ghee, jaggery, dry fruits or nuts, and cardamom powder. Similarly, moong-dal ladoos, coconut ladoos, or ragi ladoos can also be given if your child is craving some sort of sweet snack.

Most parents are concerned about what their kids are eating daily and if they are receiving good and adequate nutrition or not. Replacing junk foods with healthy and nutritious snacks is a great way to optimize nutrition for a growing child. It may sound time-consuming on a daily basis, but there are many recipes that you can pre-make for the week like ladoos, chutney, and ginger-garlic paste. This helps parents to serve kids fresh food with minimum effort. Include your kids in assembling activities of foods like salad, ladoos, pizza toppings, bhel, corn chat, and more to inculcate the habit of healthy eating. Stay tuned for more recipes from top nutritionists and other information from leading consultants.