Understanding What is in your Snacks
We as a culture love to snack and much of our culture is centered around it. How many times have you gone to a meeting where there have been cookies or maybe a cold cut plate with crackers? We encourage our children to snack and even reward them with snacks. Go to your local grocery store and it is easy to see that snacks make up a large share of the food market, with more advertising being spent on snack foods than any other area of the food market.
With so many snacks in our home, schools and daily lives we have to wonder how healthy those snacks really are. Having an occasional snack certainly does not hurt anyone, but those snacks can add up and pack an unhealthy number of calories, fat and sugar that accounts for a large percentage of our obesity and nutrition related problems. Understanding what is in your snacks and how they add up calorie wish can help you get control over your snacking.
There are both healthy and unhealthy snacks on the market, so learning to spot healthier snacks can make a big difference on your daily total of calories and nutrients. If you like to snack you will want to become an avid label reader and make the decision to eat snacks that can add nutrition to your diet as well as satisfy your urge to indulge.
The first important thing to look at on your snack is the number of calories versus the size of the serving. Many manufacturers lately have gotten people to buy their snacks by offering 100 calorie snack packs making people believe that somehow what is in those little packages is somehow healthier than their larger versions of the same product. This is simply a marketing ploy designed to get you to buy their products.
Check your snack for the percentage of fat it contains but more importantly check to see what type of fat it contains. Avoid saturated fats and Trans fats and try to get snacks that have smaller amounts of polyunsaturated fats that come from whole foods sources. This means avoiding snacks that contain large amounts of oil or are fried in oil. Too much added fat or the wrong kind of fat can increase the risk of obesity, coronary diseases, and other diet related diseases.
Your snack should have only limited amounts of sugar and should not be high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. Look for snacks that contain natural sweeteners in small amounts. Too much sweetener can increase your risk of obesity and eventually lead to other diet related illnesses such as diabetes.
Consider purchasing an organic snack versus a non-organic snack. Organic snacks do not have all the chemicals, preservatives and pesticides that non organic snacks do. Organic snacks are gaining in popularity and because of that they are becoming more affordable, and have become a tasty and healthy alternative to fat and sugar laden snacks.
If you choose to snack then be sure that you are buying the healthiest snacks you can find, and for a healthy snack that is packed with nutrition and taste check out Kind Snacks. Filled with fruits and nuts these bars not only taste great but they provide a wide array of essential nutrients.
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