My dh and I have decided to try and cut out as much junky foods as possible. My ds has this horrible fetish for chips of all things. My question then is, does anyone have any good recipes for snack foods that are healthy and appealing to kids? All of a sudden my ds has taken up being a picky eater and it's driving us nuts. Oh, and does anyone have any ideas for a nutrition shake we could maybe convince him is a milk shake, he'll take vitamins but I'm not sure how much his body is actually absorbing.
We make breakfast shakes that are good anytime of the day. We use yogurt or tofu. Blueberries, raspberries, pineapple juice, or fat free milk. I also add carrot juice from time to time. Blend it up and it is healthy and tastes good. The pineapple juice makes it sweet. Bake your own chips. Brown some garbanzo beans until they are crispy and season them. These can take the place of corn nuts. Use egg whites instead of the whole egg. Bake fat free or low fat cookies. Have carrots and other veggies sliced and ready for snacking. Make a fat free ranch dressing to dip them in.
my boys love popcorn, I'll pop some in our air popper and then lightly spritz it with melted butter and a little salt. It's better than chips. also if you have a food dehydrator available you can make your own fruit rollups as well as dried fruit which is great for snacking. Make chex mix (recipe is on the chex box), toss some kix cereal in a little butter or oil and your favorite seasonings and then bake until crisp.
You can also make fruit rollups in the oven if you do not have a dehydrator. I no longer have the recipe but I got one off of Martha Stewart's site. It might still be there. You can probably find some online too.
Great ideas! Thanks. I appreciate all your help. I'm going to try those all. i had dehydrator years ago and learned how to make beef jerky, I forgot about making my own fruit roll ups. I'm going to have to look into buying a new dehydrator.
If your son likes chips maybe invest in a dehydrator and make apple and banana chips. rasins and peanuts apples and peanutbutter wheat crackers and cheese slices oatmeal cookies with rasins and apples
http://www.nwf.org/kidzone/kzPage.cfm?siteId=1&departmentId=129 I like the snacks in the Wild Animal Baby & Your Big Backyard magazines. The kids think they are fun to make and eat. Family Fun's website probably has a ton of recipes too. I let the kids pick out fruit from the store. We have a "sweet" snack at 10, a healthy snack & a sweet snack at lunchtime, and a healthy snack at 3:30. Then they are allowed to get "no ask" (aka healthy) snacks through the day without asking, if they are hungry. This cuts down on the "I'm hungry" whine.
My kids LOVE hummus and will eat it with veggies or pita bread. If your kids will only do veggies with ranch, you make your own ranch dressing dip using the ranch mix packets with plain yogurt. They also like almonds with some dried fruit. We do smoothies almost every day for breakfast. I add some fresh or canned fruit, yogurt or kefir (the kind with live bacteria and plain yogurt so we don't get extra sugar), some juice (I'll even get the juice with veggies in it) and some frozen fruit or ice cubes. I blend it all up and we have it for breakfast. If they don't finish it at breakfast, I stick it in the fridge for their snack. It is a favorite in our house and the flavors change based on what you use.
We do a lot of smoothies in the summer time. Am snack is usually either fruit or grain. Pm snack is usually veggies & dip (homemade with yogurt instead of sour cream, they don't know the difference!). PM snack is when I allow sweet treats like granola bars or homemade cookies. The truth is...if he's hungry, he'll eat. Try to just keep good grabs on hand...fruit, baby carrots, whole grain crackers and cheese sticks, yogurt or yogurt drinks (I try to buy the ones with less sugar OR make my own). You can make yogurt cheese, too. If you take plain yogurt and suspend a strainer over a bowl - line with cheesecloth (usually double layer), then cover and let drain - 4 hours to over night depending on how thick you want it. I fyou do it overnight it gets the consistency of cream cheese ad you can use it on whole wheat bagels or whole grain toast. Add fruit to it, or savory spices and make a "cheese" spread. No one will know! Wishing you luck. Revamping diets is hard to do. My eldest is a gymnast and we HAVE to increase her protien intake. It has NOT been easy b/c she is not a cheese or dairy eater! Hope you find some good ideas!
Thank you everyone for all your suggestions, ideas and links to great sites that I saved. I got him to eat some soup yesterday and he even asked for more. I was shocked but I told him if he wanted to race bikes he would have to eat good foods. Since his new love is racing he ate it all. He's three so I figure this is also part of a stage, but I figure during this stage we might as well take away the junk and add the good healthy stuff. I never thought about using yogurt for my ranch dip for him. He'd probably eat that since he loves ranch, I have to make my own ranch dressing mix because all the others make red spots on his face where he smeared it on his face instead of ate it. Again, thank you everyone with all your suggestions.
He does if he's interested in it. He'll help make pancakes by stirring the batter, and stuff like that, but for the last two weeks it's been like pulling teeth to get him to eat anything he use to really like. I guess the one thing he still loves is his mini shredded wheats...he loves those for breakfast.
