Healthy Snacks Ideas, Gripes, and a Giveaway!

I Won't Even Speculate As To What Strange Ritual Is Going On Here.

Photo: Plan 59

Hungry... but it's not quite mealtime yet?

Some folks have a "no snacking between meals" policy. If that's part of your particular dietary religion, then so sorry!  You'll have to suck it up, distract yourself, and wait until the clock tells you it's time to eat again.  Just try not to think of any of sweet or salty or crispy or creamy or rich or flavorful favorites you might have--you know, those delicious treats you absolutely love that would taste so so good right now if only it were the right time of day?  Yeah, just don't think about them or imagine yourself enjoying them, because how frustrating would that be when you can't have any?

Hey, did that help? You're welcome!

Many of us, however, embrace snacking--especially me! I am a big oinky unrestrained gluttonous pig an enthusiastic consumer of all kinds of foods (though mostly healthy).   I figure if I'm hungry, and an official meal is not imminent, then hell, it's time for me to forage up a snack.

What's my biggest gripe about snacking?

It's the lack of healthy convenient options! Most packaged or fast-food snacks are Evil, and yet I'm lazy, and I sometimes like to leave my house.  You would think with the bazillions of dollars the food and restaurant industry rakes in, there would be a few more options for us healthy types, wouldn't you?  Yet despite the claims on labels and menus, most of the snack items marketed as "healthy" are pure crap.

Wouldn't it be nice if say, the vending machine in your office was packed full of healthier options than  chips and candy bars?  Well, turns out there's a company trying to do that, called HUMAN. Annabel from Feed Me, I’m Cranky told me about their attempts to improve the sad state of snacking in workplaces and schools around the country. And they're hosting a giveaway!

So, let's talk snacks... and who knows, perhaps you may win a gift pack of healthy snacks, along with a mighty cool T-shirt!

What Does Healthy Snacking Even Mean?

Of course everyone has a different idea of what "healthy" is.

And hey, just for fun, let's let the Vegans and the Primal folks and the Weight Watchers all duke it out:

Which snack is the Most Evil and which is the Most Acceptable?

(a) A serving of fried chicken skins;
(b) A Krispy Kreme Fruit Pie; or
(c) A 140 calorie serving of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Sundae?

As the links and the associated dietary agendas will confirm, all of these snacks are either A-OK, or Absolutely Forbidden, depending on which camp you're in.  So let's disabuse ourselves of notion of a universal solution, shall we?

But heck, since it's my blog and all, here are some of my very personal and arbitrary standards for healthy snacking. Please pass on your own better ideas down in the comments!

Crabby's Personal Snacking Principles:

1. The snack item should not contain more hundreds-of-calories than there are hours before the next meal.

Whoa, that sounds like crazytalk doesn't it? What I mean is, 100 calories buys me about an hour before I'm hungry again. If I've got 2 hours until the next meal, my snack probably shouldn't be over 200 calories.

2. The snack should contain at least some protein and fiber, and ideally it should not have a high glycemic load. Bonus points if vegetables are involved. This increases satiety, nutrition, and contributes to a pleasant sense of smugness.

3. The snack should ideally be made entirely of organic local whole foods that were cultivated, prepared and delivered by cheerful well-compensated individuals in inspiring, life-affirming workplaces. But failing that, I'd at least like to avoid toxic snacks full of transfats and known carcinogens, and I'd like to minimize sodium, sugar, refined grains, gratuitous and non-nutritive calories, and artificial flavorings and colorings. (Though I do have a sweet tooth and thus somehow rationalize the use of sucralose, stevia, and erythritol. Whatever.)

4. The snack should not taste crappy.

5. However, the snack also can't taste too delicious unless portion control measures are in place.

(For example, I can easily consume an entire days worth of calories in 10 minutes eating trail mix, and still be sniffing around the cupboards looking for more. Even the healthiest of dried fruit and nut combos can be a nutritional disaster unless I throw a reasonable amount in a baggie and march my ass straight out the door).

A Few Healthy Snack Ideas

See how small this list is? That's 'cause I need help! If you have some good ideas or links to blog posts or other resources for healthy snacks, please put them in the comments and I'll try to add them.

• Raw Veggies with Healthy Dip (hummus, guacamole, yogurt-based dips etc)
• Canned wild salmon (mushed with a bit of goat cheese or mayo and onion). (Trader Joe's is rumored to have bpa free linings, even if they don't promote it).
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Meat or fish jerky (naturally preserved, not the junk-food kind)
• Fruit!
• Nuts
• Yogurt without a bunch of sugar added
• Veggie chips: kale, sweet potato, etc. (And by that I don't mean potato or corn or rice chips flavored with veggies, but actual vegetable chips. These can be hard to find unless you make 'em yourself or pay the folks at Brad's Raw Chips to fix some up for you).
• Seaweed snacks (my current obsession; I also get these from TJ's).
• Popcorn
• Whole grain crackers with meat or cheese or a sensible spread or dip
• Almond or peanut butter and bananas
• Dark chocolate
• A Very Small Plate of Last Night's Leftovers

See? I need help here!

So What's The Deal With the Vending Machines and the Giveaway?

So apparently the HUMANs are trying to get their vending machines in more places.  They're offering to pay folks to find places like schools, gyms, or corporate locations that might be up for a healthier vending machine option. You fill out a referral form, and if they end up placing a machine there, you get $250.00.

Also, in order to help publicize their efforts, they're giving away "a sample pack of some of the items we sell in our machines, including Larabars, Clif Z Bars, Zico Coconut Water and more, as well as a HUMAN-branded t-shirt." Which is apparently and ideal gift for any headless friends or relatives you have who need cute clothing items!

They also have a guys-style T-shirt available.

So if you'd like to enter, just leave a comment below (a healthy snack idea would be nice, but not mandatory).  We'll hold the random drawing in a week.  (Note: this is yet another giveaway that requires a U.S. mailing address, sorry about that!)

And do remember to check back; if you win, you need to claim your prize before the end of the day on Wednesday January 18th or there will be a new drawing.

Good luck!

So, anyone have any thoughts, gripes, or healthy snack ideas? I'm suddenly very hungry!

Snackorama!

You know how every now and then you can't quite get your act together to plan and prepare and shop for a nutritious meal, and so you think: "screw it, I'll just see what I've got in the fridge?" And so you pull out maybe some grapes and cheese and bread and a leftover chicken drumstick and maybe some cut-up vegetables and dip, and you take all these snacks and throw them on a plate and say, "voila: dinner!"

OK, maybe you don't. But I do, and to stretch the analogy reeaaaaly far, that's sort of what today's post is. I just have some random things to say about various foods, and rather than think and plan and come up with a coherent meal theme, I thought I'd just throw three unrelated food items out there on one plate page and say, "voila: Wednesday's post!"

Note: viewer discretion advised. One of the treats I will confess to eating will leave you SHOCKED and AMAZED that any health blogger, even one named Crabby McSlacker, could seriously recommend it.

The Curious Case of The Irresistible Almond Butter

So it wasn't that long ago that I wrote a post about portion control in which I mentioned I sometimes enjoy peanut butter or almond butter sandwiches. (With honey, bananas, and a big glass of milk).

And sure, I'd noticed I was starting to eat these sandwiches more frequently. I just assumed that, as happens with a lot of food items, my cravings were a "phase." I often go through periods when a certain food appeals to me a whole heck of a lot. I eat it like crazy, then... phhhhttt! I don't feel like it anymore for a long time.

But it's been months now that I've been totally obsessed with peanut butter and almond butter sandwiches! Well, I don't write poetry to them, or sneak out of bed at 2 am to have a rendezvous or anything. But I do seem to require one pretty much every day.

What is UP with that? Has a similar food obsession ever happened to anyone else? Is there a cure?

And it didn't help that a few weeks ago I got an email on behalf of Justin's Nut Butters saying: wanna try some samples of our portable peanut butter and almond butter squeeze packs? They come plain or in flavors.

Normally, in a non-nut-butter-obsessed time of my life, I'd remember that accepting free stuff to eat means I eventually have to write a review of said free stuff, which I never actually feel like doing. So I would have said no.

But, well, in a weak moment fueled by almond-butter-lust I said yes.

So these little portion controlled squeeze packs arrived, and they are indeed cute!



And they're convenient, especially if you're going somewhere where hauling an entire jar of peanut butter around might not be practical. The packs are also portion controlled--there are little 100 calorie packs and bigger 180 calorie ones.

As to the flavors, I have to admit I was skeptical. I thought: almond butter should come in one flavor, almond. But the Almond/Maple and the Honey/Peanut varieties? Both tasty! The maple, in particular, could have easily been gross and fakey and disgusting, but instead, it was subtle and pleasant and not overly sweet. The peanut butter also comes in cinnamon flavor, which seemed to me a really bad idea. Sure enough, I tried it, and for me--yuck. Those are two flavors that are both lovely, but not together. Others of you may be more open-minded about that.

Anyway, I give Justin and his Peanut and Almond Butter packs two sticky thumbs up!


Easy Tasty Guacamole Recipe

I love guacamole, and it's one of those foods that tastes too delicious to be good for you. It's like the Nutrition Gods weren't paying attention when they invented avocados: wait, these things have fiber and antioxidants and potassium and folate and oleic acid? They should be all stringy and gross and bitter! What were we thinking, how did they end up so yummy and creamy?

Anyway, the trick to easy and tasty guacamole: have access to good salsa.

If you can get a container of good fresh salsa from your grocery store deli or local Mexican place, the guacamole work is all done for you!

Just mash up avocados, and gradually add salsa and garlic salt until it it tastes wonderful.

You'd think you'd need fresh garlic (and it's probably better for you) but garlic salt seems to work just fine.

Note: this is eat-at-home guacamole; it turns brown pretty fast. If you want take-to-the-potluck guacamole, you might want to squeeze some lemon or lime in there too.


Dessert Fake-Out

Ever feel like just a little something sweet, but know that you need to be limiting the amount of sugar and butter and white flour and bad fats you eat?

There are, of course, virtuous ways to handle that dilemma: just say no. Or have fruit. Or eat some anti-oxidant-packed dark chocolate, the healthy 95% kind that tastes as bitter as 3 day old coffee grounds.

The whole 100 calorie pack industry exists for just this reason, for damage control, but somehow these never work for me--they're too small for 100 calories, and they remind me of my junky treats from my youth without actually tasting as good.

So my new cheat option, when it's not yet time for a real splurge? Tiny little vanilla mini-meringues from Trader Joes.

These things are so silly! Each one is only about the size of a peanut M&M. And there is nothing nutritionally "good" about them, other than that, to my knowledge, they don't contain poison. But they are only 1 calorie apiece. One calorie! Nothing with actual sugar in it is ever one calorie!

So with my immature toddler brain, quite easily fooled on matters of portion control, I can have like 25 or 30 sweet crunchy meringue thingies and feel like I've had "dessert." (Note: they must be eaten One at a Time to achieve this fake-out effect). Plus, if I have them along with a nice healthy cup of green tea, in my mind, the green tea virtue cancels out the tiny bit of meringue indulgence and it comes out even.

Anyone out there have any food obsessions, or any nifty snacks or treats you've discovered that you want to tell us about?

100 Calorie Packs Cut Snacking? Reeallly?

So it wasn't long ago I wrote a post about reduced calorie, portion controlled snacks. And here I am talking about it again. What gives?

Well, it's partly because I just came across some actual research on the subject!

Study Says Portion Controlled Snacks Cut Calorie Consumption

Yep, a recent study of 100-calorie snack packages found that people consume about 120 fewer calories a day when they're eating from the little 100 cal guys than when they're given the same snacks in normal-sized packages.

Hooray for research! So now those of you who like to buy and eat 100-calorie packs of your favorite junk foods can feel somewhat vindicated. You may well be eating less than if you were buying the regular versions.

Yet oddly enough, some folks are reluctant to have these little snack packs in the house.

People like, for example... me.

Shh... Are We All By Ourselves Here?

Not long ago Cranky Fitness hosted a giveaway featuring coupons redeemable for some low-calorie, portion controlled snack food. Many of you had mixed feelings about these 100 calorie (or less) treats, and expressed these feelings in a very entertaining manner. (And how cool is it that we now have a compilation of poems about snack foods? )

I said in the post that I have been known to eat these foods on occasion--which is true. I also said I thought they were a perfectly legitimate thing to snack on sometimes, which is also true. Especially if someone's actually done a study saying they help folks with portion control.

However, I won't personally have the little f*ckers in the house.

It did not seem sporting of me, however, to go into great detail about this at the time. Not when someone was giving us some 100 calorie thingies to try for free.

But now, after an unfortunate incident involving a wayward box of Golden Sponge Cake Twinkie-Like Snacks not even meant for me, I feel compelled to share my feelings about these portion controlled treats.

But What About the Giveaway? Where's the Beef?

Ah yes, a brief digression before I start whining about snacks:

As you may have noticed, it's Friday but yet again, this is not a giveaway post. Sorry.

It's looking like these won't be happening every Friday, but we hope that on many or at least some Fridays we may have Free Things for you to win. It sort of depends on whether anyone knocks on the blog's front door and says, "Hi ya Crabby, want some free stuff to give out?"

When they do, I'll say, "hell yeah!" unless it's for something way too weird. I have actually turned down offers before. You don't even want to know what you missed.

Of course sometimes, lacking free things to offer up, we may offer pictures of semi-naked men as a cheap appeasement gesture.

Photo by Nàlez

(Actually, it's not just a cheap gesture, it's principled feminist statement. Because at Cranky Fitness, we are still trying mightily to correct the appalling discrepancy between sexy-women images and sexy-men images in the media. We support women being Subjects sometimes and not just Objects. Wait... what does this have to do with 100 calorie snacks? Er... never mind).

So here is my brief list of reasons why I think...

100 Calorie Snack Packs Are Actually Instruments of the Devil.

Heh heh heh. One of my better ideas.

(Photo by zoomar)

1. They're Too Damn Small

I know, they're supposed to be small. But c'mon!

I think food manufacturers used to spend more time messing with the ingredients, rather than the portion sizes, of diet foods. They'd make normal sized stuff, but they'd use weirder constituent parts. That’s why diet junk food used to taste pretty much like artificial sweeteners, petroleum derivatives, insecticide, and cardboard.

Now the lower cal versions don't taste nearly as vile as they used to. Because they’re just as calorie-packed as the original! You just get less to eat.

Fair enough, I suppose. But so often the manufacturers try to disguise the fact you're only getting a couple of bites by hiding itty bitty portions in great big wrappers and boxes. And then they put freakishly exaggerated pictures on the front so you think you're getting an actual serving.

This works fine in the store—-the first time. "Wow, look what I get for 100 calories, that's a miracle! Hallelujah !" But this approach can backfire when the snack is taken home and opened. "THOSE are supposed to be cupcakes? Surely not for humans? Maybe they're marketing directly to ants now?"

I know we Americans are accustomed to gigantic serving sizes, but still. Even you sensible Europeans would be appalled at how miniscule some of these things are.


2. They're Expensive!

Portion control comes at a price. And it's not just the actual cost of those little wrappers and boxes; I'm sure of it. There's an additional "You're Afraid You Can't Control Yourself" penalty tax assessed on these items, paid for mainly by women. (Men who can't control themselves seem more likely not to give a crap and be perfectly happy with normal size packages). If you put all those tiny little servings together you might find you're paying $15 for the equivalent of a candy bar or $ 25 for normal sized bag of regular cookies.

3. They're Not Real Food

Readers of Cranky Fitness are very smart and are under no illusions that Light Donuts or 100 calorie Chocolate Chip Cookies or Potato chips, etc, are real food.

However, have you ever noticed that friends, relatives, and coworkers can get confused about this? They treat these things like they are real food and they eat a boatload of it because it's "low-cal." Their days start with reduced calorie toaster pastry for breakfast and then they have the "lite" choice at the fast food place for lunch and the 100 calorie snack item from the vending machine in the afternoon and a frozen reduced calorie tv dinner at night followed by a reduced calorie frozen treat for dessert, or three, because they're tiny. And these people think they're being incredibly virtuous! Yikes.

4. They come in boxes

Alas, I am not the least bit fooled by individual wrappers. You can call something a "serving size" and put some sealed plastic around it, but if you sell those little servings in boxes along with other little servings, folks like me will figure out that we can always open up more wrappers. We keep doing that until we are satisfied or the whole damn box is gone, and guess which usually comes first?

So I recently received, by mistake, a box of faux twinkies that I suspect was meant for another blogger--one who had not already cashed in on the faux twinkie giveaway by giving away snack coupons.

I didn't want the twinkies in my house; that's why I'd done the promotion as a giveaway in the first place and not as a review.

There were six teeny tiny twinkies in the box at 80 calories a pop. Two days later, all six were gone. (Or wait, could there have been 8? Oh Lord... lets hope it was six.) Actual calories per "serving" came to 240, unless it was 320. Crap. Alas, I don't think I burned many extra calories opening up those additional wrappers.


5. They're Tasty!

I know that many of you do not find processed portion controlled snack food to be the least bit tempting.

I do.

Those damn fake twinkies? They totally rocked. Sure, they tasted a bit plasticky, but I grew up eating synthetic food like that. Desserts that are super sweet and artificially moist have a special place in my heart.

Just not in my cupboard.


I know many of you already shared your feelings about these things, but feel free to do so again, or comment on whatever the heck you want. Got a fun weekend coming up? Are you registered to vote yet? Read any good books or seen any good movies lately? We're easy!