Healthy Hacks and Recipes to Make Snack Time a Breeze

Happy little ‘snack’cidents!

The new year is in full swing and everyone seems to be on a health kick. But this change in lifestyle is not only for grown-ups, mama. After what I’m sure was a holiday filled with McDonalds, ice cream and loads of Christmas treats it’s time to get the kiddies back on the road to good health. Here are a few healthy hacks for all the mamas out there, to keep your kids motivated to eat nutritious bites. Make sure to scroll down to our slideshow at then end for four delicious healthy recipes!

Scroll down to our slideshow for four delicious healthy recipes

Keep it as unprocessed as possible

Look for ingredients that are organic and which contain very little colourants and preservatives. Instead opt for things that are vitamin fortified and contain less sugar and sodium.

Make it colourful and visually exciting

People eat with their eyes and kids even more so. Cutting food into fun shapes and using decorations in bright colours will make it more likely that kids will be interested in eating their healthy snacks. Head over to Shanghai Street and invest in a few cookie cutters (can you say Olaf PB&J mama?).

Give it a story (little white lie?)

Kids like to play pretend, tell them an imaginative story about foods that they are unwilling to try. Broccoli can become tiny trees, cut carrots become a rabbit’s french fries and in a flash, kids will want to eat more.

Make it fun to eat

Get kids to eat with chopsticks, cartoon toothpicks or their own personalised cutlery to get them involved in eating. It makes it exciting for the kids and saves mum from having to feed them, after all mum’s need to eat too!

Read more: Start Your New Year Right: 5 Healthy Habits

Homemade is best

Hong Kong imports a lot of snacks for kids however many of the retail snacks are high in sodium and preservatives, things that are easy to avoid by preparing snacks at home. This does not mean baking the whole weekend away. Simple ingredients can be made into amazing snacks and as an bonus you can get the kids to help mama! With the following recipes in the slideshow below, you can make everyday household ingredients into delicious and fun snacks your kids will love eating!

Getting the kids involved in the kitchen can help them to foster a good relationship with food and show them healthy snacks don’t have to be boring. Your imagination is the limit!

Click through the slideshow for four healthy snack recipes…

Ingredients:

• 3 bananas
• 45 ml greek yoghurt
• 1 small box of coco pops
• 1 small box of frosties cereal
• Cupcake confetti (optional)

Method:

1. In two separate ziplock bags carefully crush the coco pops and frosties to make them finer. Add cupcake confetti if you wish to make them more colourful.
2. Peel the banana and slather on the Greek yoghurt to cover the entire surface of the banana.

3. Carefully roll the bananas in your topping making sure the banana is covered all over.
4. Cut each banana into five or six pieces.
5. Serve them with chopsticks for added fun.

Ingredients:

• 1 apple
• ¼ cup of peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1/8 cup of sunflower seeds
• 1/8 cup of desiccated coconut
• ¼ cup of raisins

Method:

1. Mix together the peanut butter, sunflower seeds, honey and coconut and set aside.
2. Remove the core of the apple (optional).
3. Cut the apple into 6/8 even slices. If you did not core the apple make sure to remove the seeds at this point.
4. Slather 3 or 4 slices with the peanut mixture and top with some raisins.
5. Cover with the final apple slice.

Ingredients:

• 1 baby cucumber
• 10 gold fish crackers
• 1/4 cup of cream cheese
• Blue food colouring (optional)
• 2 sheets of dried seaweed snack

Method:

1. Clean and wash the cucumber and split it in half length ways.
2. With a teaspoon carefully remove all the seeds from the cucumber halves.
3. If you wish to colour the cream cheese, add two to three drops of food colouring and mix well.
4. Fill each half with the cream cheese mixture.
5. Top with five goldfish per cucumber half.
6. Serve with the dried seaweed snack (you can crumble this over just before serving).

Ingredients:

• 10 round/oval chicken flavoured crackers
• ¼ cup cheese spread
• 20 pretzel sticks
• 10 raisins

Method:

1. Spread the cheese spread over five of the crackers.
2. Break the pretzel sticks into two and arrange 8 on each cracker to resemble spider legs.
3. Sandwich the crackers together.
4. Dab two dots of cream cheese on the top of the top cracker and put two raisins on top for the eyes.