Clean Out: Replace with Healthy Snacks

Clean Out:
Is your pantry or refridgerator full of unhealthy foods?

Get out a few bags and shop in your pantry for unhealthy foods and bag them up and put them aside for play dates, parties or donations, having too many easy to reach poor quality foods around is too tempting!

In my house, each week we choose a salty and a sweat snack for the week - - maybe Newman's O's and Sun Chips or Edy's Slow Churn and pretzels. That's it, those are the treats for the week. In addition we usually have a stock of items like baby carrots and low-fat dressing, prunes, apples, kiwi, high fiber cereal, lower sugar granola bars to snack on.

Great snack choices are below: Stick to serving sizes!

•Clif Nectar bars, any variety; real fruit, good fats and fiber (also good are lara bars, look for low-fat <2g saturated, low-sugar <10g, a lot of these are made with fruit so expect to see some sugar)
•Thomas’ Sahara 100% whole wheat pita pockets with any variety of hummus or spread some pomi strained tomatoes, oregano and part-skim mozzarella for a great healthy pita pizza; don’t like the whole wheat pita? Try a fresh baked whole wheat bread. Toast the whole wheat bread then spray on some olive oil and add garlic powder. Then the pomi strained tomatos etc. and under the broiler for 1 minute. Its delicious!
•Health Valley Organic Vegetable soup, no salt added (but go ahead and add a little), no fat, high fiber, low sodium
•Kashi all natural granola bars, any variety; whole grains, high fiber, low sugar
•The Baker 7 or 9 grain whole wheat bread (or similar) with a light coating of land o lakes light butter with canola oil, 6g of fiber in the bread and the best choice in butter/margarine with only 2g of saturated fats
•An apple with the skin on – gala or fuji have skin that is not as tough as a red delicious for example; an apple a day truly is a great goal
•Triskets – baked whole wheat crackers high in fiber and good fats. Try topping each with a little monetary jack cheese and salsa or a little Pomi strained tomatoes and shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
•The laughing cow light original swiss cheese – one wedge with a few (3-4) Newman’s Own pretzel rods.
•Fresh vegetables, celery, carrots, peppers, broccoli dipped in any variety of Drew’s all natural dressing and marinade – try smoked tomato! Mrs Dash 10 Minute Marinade also a good choice; try these on chicken too!
•Edys Slow Churned Ice Cream, half the fat, put it in a small desert bowl to minimize portion so you don’t double the size and negate the benefit – small portion of hydrogenated oil but still a better choice; Healthy Choice Premium Ice Cream Bars/Fudge Bar or Ice Cream Sandwich – 80 calories and ½ a gram of saturated fat
•100% whole grain fig newtons
•Fast food?– try Mcdonalds fruit and walnut salad
•Smoothies – fresh or frozen strawberries (fresh is best) with low fat vanilla yogurt and 1% milk or one small scoop of Edy’s slow churned vanilla ice cream; a banana, apple juice and fresh or frozen strawberries; add a kiwi to either too!
•Light oil Popped corn (or air pop). This is easy. Get plain corn kernels with a little heated olive oil (measure 1 tbsp), cover, pop, add a little salt and enjoy
•Chips, best choice, ruffles Natural sea-salted, reduced fat chips
•Fruit salad – strawberries, banana & kiwi. If you serve desserts make at least ½ per week fruit – salads, smoothies etc.
•Kashi Heart to Heart Honey Toasted Oat Cereal – low sugar and “high fiber (five or more grams) and great taste – try with organic valley fat free milk! (note: not all Kashi cereals are this good: strawberry fields tastes great but only has 1g of fiber)
•Nature’s Path Organic FlaxPlus multibran cereal
•Kashi TLC Oatmeal Dark Chocolate cookies or any variety