Snacks often have a very negative image. Snacking is often confused with unhealthy snacking or uncontrolled eating of junk food. But snacking isn't a bad thing at all. Quite the opposite. By eating healthy snacks throughout the day, you provide your body with the nutrients and energy you need at different times of the day.
Snacks can be more or less substantial between-meal meals, whether sweet or savory. This doesn't mean that a snack can't be a piece of chocolate every now and then . On some occasions, it even has to be a piece of chocolate.
In general, however, you should make sure your snacks are healthy and balanced. Snacks and snacks should provide you with vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and more that you haven't yet covered with your meals.
Generally, it's recommended to eat three meals and three snacks between meals a day. That may seem like a lot, but the amount matters. If you regularly snack between meals, you'll never feel as hungry at main meals. This way, you won't have to eat oversized portions, which only puts a strain on your body.
Healthy snacks contribute significantly to a healthy diet. Low-calorie snacks can help you lose weight or maintain it. Vitamin-rich snacks with plenty of great nutrients strengthen your immune system, and delicious, sweet snacks simply make you happy between meals.
What are healthy snacks?
A healthy snack provides you with exactly what you need at the right time. It'll pull you out of your slump at work in the morning, and it'll keep your blood sugar levels balanced in the afternoon. A healthy snack helps prevent cravings and provides you with the energy you need after exercise or while hiking.
But what constitutes a healthy snack? For a healthy diet, it's important that snacks contain plenty of fruit, vegetables, and nuts. Weight-loss snacks, of course, are snacks without refined sugar and with as little fat as possible.
A healthy snack also consists of as many natural ingredients as possible. This means it's best to say goodbye to highly processed snacks available in stores. These snacks usually consist only of flavor enhancers, fat, sugar, and artificial flavors. While these snacks may taste good, they are neither valuable nor healthy for your body.
What are healthy snacks?
Simple, low-calorie snacks are, of course, pure fruit and vegetables. There's nothing easier than packing an apple, a pear, a kiwi, and some grapes in your lunchbox and taking it to work, school, or university.
But why doesn't this often work? It's mainly because we don't really consider a whole apple a snack. When it comes to snacking, we prefer small pieces that can be popped into our mouths in one bite. However, this is often where our laziness or convenience comes into play. So you have to overcome the urge to cut the fruit and vegetables into bite-sized pieces . However, this can all be conveniently prepared the evening before, so you don't have to invest a lot of time in the morning preparing snacks for work.
Homemade granola bars are also a low-calorie snack. Dried fruit, vegetable chips, juices and smoothies, and even nuts are also healthy snacks for in between meals.
Ideas for easy-to-make snacks for work, the office, and on the go
With your juicer or a slow juicer, you can quickly prepare liquid, healthy snacks. Freshly squeezed juices fill you up without putting a strain on your body, lift you from energy slumps, provide you with essential nutrients, and also ensure your blood sugar remains stable.
By the way, you can also make your own gummy bears using the juice you squeezed yourself .
You can prepare a variety of different fruit and vegetable juices. This way, your snack menu never gets boring, as you can prepare a different version every day.
You can also use your blender to create fantastic smoothies . In addition to fruits and vegetables, you can also enhance them with great protein sources, superfoods, spices, and more. This way, you can also prepare your own protein shake for after a workout.
You can also easily prepare a healthy snack in your dehydrator . You can dry any seasonal fruit you like. These can be taken practically anywhere. Dried fruits are popular snacks for hikes, picnics, and for work, sports, and play.
You can also make your own granola bars in your dehydrator. You can use any nuts, fruits, seeds, and kernels you like best. Of course, granola bars are available in all sorts of varieties. However, the problem here is that they often contain a lot of sugar. Other healthy snacks can also be prepared in a dehydrator, such as energy balls, homemade chips, and fruit leather.
With a food processor you can prepare healthy dips and spreads.
Also fresh pesto for a quick pasta snack and much more.
With all homemade snacks, you know exactly what's in them. You can cater to your specific diets, intolerances, and preferences. These are the most important aspects of a healthy and, above all, conscious diet.
Healthy snack - all homemade
For an evening in front of the TV, for example, you can make healthy chips yourself. All you need is a dehydrator or air fryer. You can use it to make all kinds of popular chips, from low-calorie kale and carrot chips to low-fat potato chips.
Healthy snack recipes:
Perhaps the best snack is the tried-and-true trail mix. Toast a colorful mix of nuts and seeds in a nonstick pan without any fat. Let them cool, then mix them with finely chopped dried fruit.
In the dehydrator , you can make delicious fruit leather from various fruit purees. This provides a healthy and highly flavorful alternative to gummy bears and the like. In the air fryer, you can also fry chickpeas, beans, and lentils in hot air to create crispy snacks. These can be seasoned sweetly or savorily to your liking.
What can you eat in between meals?
All of these ideas and suggestions are ideal as a snack. Salads, sandwiches with various homemade spreads, and wraps are also healthy snacks that you can easily take with you.
You can mix the marinades for your salads in a blender and store them in bottles in the refrigerator. You can use a blender to puree your own spreads from cooked pulses, soaked nuts, herbs, vegetables, and spices. You can fill wraps with salads, vegetables, and spreads.
Which snacks are recommended in the evening?
Especially in the evening, you should reach for protein-rich snacks. A nice bowl of yogurt or quark with chopped fruit or vegetables is a perfect evening snack. To quickly chop the fruit and vegetables, it's best to use a food processor. This makes it a breeze, and this healthy snack is prepared almost as quickly as opening a bag of chips.
You can also make vegetable sticks in your food processor . Enjoy these in the evening with a legume dip. These dips are also rich in protein and ideal for the evening. It's important to reduce or eliminate carbohydrates as much as possible in the evening.
CONCLUSION
Homemade is always better. This also applies to healthy snacks. You don't need much to make your own snacks and healthy snacks. A juicer, a blender, a food processor , an air fryer, and a dehydrator are the perfect tools, and you'll never have to resort to unhealthy store-bought snacks again.
Juices, smoothies, dried fruits and fruit leathers, vegetable chips, nuts, great spreads, and salads with cool dressings are the ideal snacks for your healthy diet.
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