Healthy Snacks

A healthy snack for healthy people: top 10 food groups to quickly satisfy hunger

To maintain a healthy weight, digestion, and metabolism, nutritionists say, you need to eat often, but little by little. However, the snack should be healthy. Buns, pies, chips, and sweets are a direct path to extra pounds. What healthy snack options offer nutritionists?

Healthy snack rules

Why are snacks so important to our health? The habitual diet plan, which includes two or three large meals a day, is not physiological. Our distant gatherer ancestors were rarely able to obtain a lot of food at a time. For hundreds of thousands of years, the body has adapted to the frequent but small intake of calories: the root here, a handful of berries there. The volume of our stomach is small – only about 0.5 liters when empty. But we regularly force it to stretch by eating more than necessary. Simply because we have time to get pretty hungry between two meals. As a result, we need more and more food each time to feel full. Overeating isn’t just bad for your figure. It greatly complicates digestion and slows down the metabolism.

You need to eat about six times a day, with three of these meals should be small snacks. You can have a light brunch between breakfast and lunch, an afternoon snack between lunch and dinner. Then eat something healthy one and a half to two hours before bedtime. So as not to toss and turn in bed, dreaming of a sandwich. However, it would help if you did not substitute snacks for your main meals.

For a snack, snacks that contain fast carbohydrates are completely unsuitable – they saturate instantly, but not for long. Sweets, white flour baked goods, chips, and similar snacks are far from being light, healthy snacks.

A healthy snack is high in protein and complex carbohydrates. Their calorie content is relatively low. Nevertheless, they provide long-term energy supply, improve digestion, and promote muscle tissue growth.

Fast, easy, tasty: food for the right snack

We have compiled a kind of top 10 options for a light snack at work or at home. All of them either do not require cooking at all or require minimal preparation.

Bars

Fitness bars are of two types: some are of cereal. Sometimes with the addition of dried berries, dried fruits, nuts, or dark chocolate. In contrast, others are based on fruits and nuts. Fruit and nut bars are the best choice for hungry office workers. But they are perfect for those who often resort to physical activity – athletes, regular visitors to fitness clubs. As well as for people working in the fresh air. Both types of bars are healthy and are great options for a light snack. However, they must be free of sugar, flavorings, dyes, and preservatives.

Muesli as a healthy snack

Good healthy snack. They are raw and baked – both types are perfect with milk or kefir. Raw ones are also good for adding to fruit salads. You can chew baked ones just like that. Natural muesli contains much fiber, which improves intestinal function; they are excellent saturating and contain vitamins. However, don’t confuse muesli with cornflakes – they are different foods. Flakes are not nearly as healthy as they often contain a lot of vegetable oils and sugars. Those with a sweet tooth can be advised of baked muesli with honey and dried fruits. They are more caloric than dietary ones, but they contain an additional dose of vitamins and minerals.

Nuts as a healthy snack

This is a real “superfood.” Almost all nuts contain a high dose of vitamins E and B3, a lot of potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium. They improve memory, concentration, and performance. Besides, nuts lower cholesterol levels, reduce the risk of heart attack, and benefit the genital area. But it would help if you were careful with this product. Nuts are very high in calories, so you should not eat more than 10 grams at a time.

Fruits, berries

When we say “healthy snack,” we primarily think of berries or fruits. But here, we should also be careful. Of course, all fruits and berries are healthy, rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. However, some of them, such as grapes, bananas, figs, mangoes, persimmons, and cherries, are very high in sugar. If you try to cope with overweight, you should limit them. Pay attention to fruits that are low in sugar: grapefruits, watermelon, strawberries, cranberries. Apples, which have long become a symbol of dietary nutrition, are also a controversial product: they are rich in vitamins, they are rich in iron, and fiber, but at the same time, they have the property of increasing appetite.

Vegetables as a healthy snack

There are no restrictions here! Celery stalks or vegetable salad are nearly the best healthy snack. Vegetables, both raw and cooked, are high in fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants. They prolong youthfulness, help maintain a figure and improve overall health. The most useful vegetables – that is, those with a high content of vitamins and with a low-calorie content – include broccoli, radishes, carrots, eggplants, bell peppers, cabbage, celery if you don’t feel like eating a regular vegetable salad, grill vegetables (peppers, zucchini, eggplant, carrots, beets, pumpkin, tomatoes are great for this) and make a veggie sandwich with whole-grain bread.

Whole grain crisps

Speaking of bread, whole grain buns and crispbreads are also considered excellent choices for a healthy snack. Whole grain crisps are not made from flour but soaked, crushed, and compressed cereals. No flour, no – ideally – fat, let alone yeast or eggs. It is a heavy, slightly moist bread with a rough texture. They contain a huge amount of fiber; whole grain crisps improves metabolic processes and the state of blood vessels, lowers cholesterol levels, contains B vitamins, which are necessary, in particular, for the functioning of the nervous system. But make no mistake – this is not a dietary product: 100 grams of such bread contains 300–350 calories, and if nuts, seeds, and dried fruits are added, then the calorie content is even higher.

Don’t confuse whole grain bread with wholemeal bread – they are very different foods. Wholemeal bread contains sugar, yeast, and other common ingredients. However, even it is healthier than white bread and pastries, as it contains more vitamins and fiber.

Dairy as a healthy snack

Natural yogurt, kefir, fermented baked milk, and other fermented milk products are a pleasant light snack: bonus – high content of calcium, the building material of teeth and bones. Lactobacilli, in kefir, help maintain normal intestinal microflora, but you should not rely only on them in the fight against diagnosed dysbiosis. Still, kefir is food, not medicine.

Mug-cakes

Mug-cake, or “mug cake,” is a type of diet cake that is very popular among healthy food lovers who use mug cakes as breakfast, afternoon snacks, or snacks. McGake is baked in a mug in just five to seven minutes in the microwave. Of course, this dessert is useful only if it is prepared without sugar and fat. The presence of sweeteners in the composition allows you to indulge in sweets and not gain extra calories. The recipe, which has already become a classic, includes low-fat cottage cheese and milk (you can use yogurt or kefir), an egg, bran ground into flour (oat, linseed, rice, and so on), baking powder, and sugar substitute. Sometimes cocoa, honey, nuts, and berries are added. Most of those who have ever tried to bake this dietary dessert agree that the cooking process is straightforward. The main thing is not to forget to add all the main ingredients. There are ready-made mixtures with a balanced composition on sale, which are suitable even for novice cooks.

Smoothie

They became fashionable about five to seven years ago. However, they began to make them much earlier – in the 1970s, and in the USA, in the wake of interest in a healthy lifestyle, people opened healthy food cafes. Few people like to gnaw raw carrots, but they are much more attractive in the form of mashed potatoes. Basically, baby food is the same smoothie. Smoothies are a good option for those who do not particularly like vegetable and fruit salads: it allows you to introduce into the diet such foods that few would eat just like that, for example, beets or celery. The main thing is not to add syrups, sweet yogurt, or ice cream to smoothies. Do not forget that our teeth and gums need a constant load for health, which is absent if we eat fluids constantly.

A cup of chicory with a wedge of chocolate

Roasted ground chicory is very similar to coffee. However, this drink has many benefits: it does not contain caffeine and does not increase blood pressure. Coffee drinkers often experience blood pressure problems, and an overdose of coffee (yes, this is quite possible) often leads to nausea, mood swings, tremors, decreased cognitive function, and insomnia. If life is not nice to you without coffee, drink an invigorating drink in the morning, and replace it with chicory in the afternoon. A cup of chicory and a small piece of dark chocolate is a dose of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. The chicory also contains inulin, a substance that helps absorb calcium better and maintain a healthy intestinal microflora and normal weight.

So, we’ve learned that fast, easy, tasty, and healthy snacks exist! Sometimes you have to look at the products that have long been familiar and undeservedly deprived of attention from a different angle – and they will easily occupy the first terms among your favorite dishes. You should also pay attention to the composition of the recognized “healthy” snacks and similar foods: sometimes their benefits are nothing more than a myth.