- Veg Sandwich with peanut butter
- Bread sticks with hummus (with sesame paste)
- Egg Knogg with roasted & powdered flaxseeds / sunflower seeds
- Corn Peas Veggie Chaat (tossed with olive oil & sprinkled with powdered flaxseeds/ sunflower seeds)
- Avocado almond butter smoothie
- Herbed Olives
- Nuts snack bars
The New Mantra for Healthy Snacking : Switch From Fat Free Snacks To Good Fat Snacks
Food companies have come up with a novel concept of “fat-free” in recent times, tagging their snacks with this prefix, and no doubt, it has multiplied the sales of these snacks by leaps & bounds. People go blindly by this term, without once checking the nutrition labels, as they assume that if its “fat-free”, it has to be healthy. Beware!!! This may not be the case, since those foods which are marketed as fat-free snacks, may be doused with high amounts of refined sugar or sweeteners to make it appealing & appetizing, as reducing the fat content of snack foods renders them less delicious. So, the fat has been replaced with sugar.
Nowadays, even fat-free bread spreads have been marketed, but the saturated fats have been replaced by margarine & trans fats in them which are even more harmful than saturated fats. Actually, people have been made to believe that snacks cannot be appetizing without any of those harmful fats, hence the need to switch to an alternative without any of those fats. So they naturally fall for this claim.
But, the downfall here is that in the name of being ‘fat-free snacks’ they are loaded with sugar & sweeteners which spoil the purpose of imparting health to people. On the whole, this “fat-free” propaganda just turns out to be a marketing gimmick.
How about Snacks with Good Fats ??
People seem to have generalized that all fats are bad for health, since they have often heard physicians & dieticians trying to chuk off fats from diets, or reduce them. But, however, there are good fats which doesn’t cause harm & are actually required by the body to maintain overall health.
Good Fats are those such as omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids. These fats are found in good amounts in nuts & oilseeds such flaxseeds, almonds, walnuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, etc. These nuts & oilseeds can be an excellent part of a wholesome snack food or also a snack, as a whole, in itself.
Nuts & oilseeds enrich the snack with adequate calories, good fats as well as decent amount of proteins. So, those snacks with good fats can also be said as “fat-free snacks”, albeit these fats are referred to as bad fats.
Examples of actual “fat-free snacks” (minus the bad fats & with the good fats)
Here are few of the snacks which are healthy & can be consumed with the least guilt & doubt regarding them causing any harm. They can be a mini meal in itself.