Snack for the Long Run
By Liz Sanner Davis, Certified Personal Trainer
“Sugar and Salt, preferably together,” is the tantalizing message sent and received by a huge percentage of American snacks. Fifty or sixty years ago, coming home from school at 3:30 to a “snack” meant a glass of milk, an apple or a piece of bread slathered with Skippy. Today’s children come home at 5:30 to a bag of sugar and a package of salt.
Watching parents and children and their chubby chums walk or waddle down the snack aisle of Ralph’s or Teeters is mind-numbing experience. Watch what goes into their grocery carts. Caramel nut chocolate Turtles, popcorn fortified with candy and nuts, and Sweet and Salty Chex mix, then mixed some more. The snack aisle is the path to nutrient poverty. Multiple shelves are stacked floor to top with gummy-this, and that, while tiny hands and taller teens reach out to grab colorful boxes and cellophane bags of sugar and salt. Talk about high-fiving your kindergartener!
Sweet-and-Salty snacks has become the new normal for junkies. “Hold on, now,” you exclaim. “My grandpa always sugared his sweet potatoes and salted his watermelon slices two generations ago. “True enough,” I offer as a rejoinder, “And my grandfather had sugar diabetes.”
Quick, convenient, easy to store and landfill-ready are the current snack prereqs. Child-friendly and digital means finger food. Goodness forbid that we ask our children or spouse to sit at the kitchen counter to stick a spoon in Greek yogurt or fork into juicy chunks of melon while chit-chatting about a day at school or at work. Snacks today must be quick and convenient so that everyone’s life can be lived quickly and conveniently.
Yes, participating in the twenty-first century Snack-Pack will insure that your life is indeed quick, but you and yours may not find your maladies to be convenient.
A short risk list associated with snacking on fructose and sodium includes these hazards:
- Hypertension
- Weight gain or obesity
- Dehydration
- Lack of physical satisfaction
- Tooth decay and gum disease
- Nutrient deficiency
- Digestive disorders
- Depression
- Gastrointestinal dysfunction
To avoid sounding like a POTUS candidate – big on criticisms and short on solutions – here are some great snack options, low-calorie, nutrient-dense or both. You might actually have a good time preparing them and even more fun distributing them among your children, their friends or the adult who walks in the house later than you do, wearing that hungry look.
- 10 Wheat Thin Hint of Salt crackers(or the equivalent), stacked with 1 small slice of low-salt deli turkey cut into small squares, 1 slice of avocado, divided
- ½ apple, sliced into eight pieces with a dab of natural peanut butter on each
- 1 whole orange, peeled, each section cut in half
- A bowl of mixed melon cubes
- 16 unsalted almonds and ½ piece of whole fruit
- ½ cup of plain yogurt with six strawberries, stemmed and cut in large chunks
- ¼ cup of blueberries, ¼ large banana, 2 tablespoons granola, ¼ cup of plain yogurt, mixed
- Green zucchini and carrots, crinkle-sliced and dipped in plain yogurt mixed with salsa
- Smiley face multi-grain, peanut buttered bread rounds with blueberry eyes, banana slice nose and strawberry lips!
It doesn’t need to break the bank to snack well without sugar and salt. And you can fill your health needs without filling the land. Mix your own healthful dip, cut a pile of veggies and a whole melon on Sunday before the busy week begins. Mid-week, ask your teen to do it again. And is there some family law against the big kids peeling their own oranges and getting some rind under their nails or helping toddlers count their crackers and carrot sticks? Snack time could be the ultimate family fiesta amore!
Helping children get to college, paying off the mortgage, achieving personal job satisfaction are essentials in the long run. Make your own fixings to get yourself and the entire family back in the business of preparing and consuming healthful low-salt low-sugar snacks. Nix the mix and the long run will be healthier, seem shorter…and taste sweeter.
Liz Sanner Davis, Personal TrainerCertified by The Cooper Institute, Dallas, TX