Healthy Snacks Ranking for Teenagers

1. Original without added nuts/seeds 2. Low-temperature sugar-free yogurt 3. Fresh-cut seasonal fruits/ready-to-eat vegetable strips 4. Salt-free original seaweed 5. Whole grain soda crackers without added ingredients. Other Internet celebrity snacks, such as protein bars, fruit and vegetable crisps, and cheese sticks, are temporarily listed in the "controversial waiting area" and are not recommended as a priority.

Don’t worry, this list was not made by me sitting in the office and patting my head. Last year, I followed the director of the nutrition department to conduct a dietary survey on teenagers and collected more than 1,200 snack consumption records of children aged 6-18. I found a lot of cases of missteps. Last week, a mother who was in the second grade of junior high school came for consultation and said that she bought fruit and vegetable crisps for her child as a snack every day, thinking that it was healthier than eating potato chips. As a result, the child's weight increased by 15 pounds in half a year, and the fasting blood sugar level had reached the critical value.

Oh, yes, we just mentioned fruit and vegetable crisps, which is also the most controversial category in the controversial area. Friends who work in food processing said that real low-temperature freeze-dried fruit and vegetable crisps without additives do have less nutritional loss and lower calories. However, 90% of the products on the market are fried at high temperatures. When you pinch them, your hands will be full of oil. The sodium content and added sugar are even higher than ordinary potato chips. Ordinary consumers can't tell the difference at all. So we simply put it in the area where priority is not recommended. If you really want to buy it, you have to read the ingredient list carefully - only the fruits and vegetables themselves, without vegetable oil, white sugar, or maltodextrin, are qualified.

Let’s talk about the original nuts that rank first on the list. Many people’s first reaction is that “children can easily get stuck in their throats after eating them.” This really depends on the situation: children under 10 years old don’t need to give them whole nuts, just grind them into pieces and sprinkle them in porridge or beat them into soy milk. My sister’s baby has just entered the first grade. Adding a spoonful of chopped walnuts + chopped almonds to breakfast every day not only supplements Omega3 but also does not cause the risk of choking. It is much better than eating amber walnuts covered in thick frosting. If you eat 3 of those sweet nuts, your intake of added sugar will almost reach the recommended upper limit for teenagers in a day.

The second place low-temperature sugar-free yogurt should be careful not to confuse it with "flavored yogurt". The only ingredient list that really meets the requirements is raw milk and probiotics. It tastes sour and many children can't tolerate it. You can cut a few fresh strawberries and blueberries yourself and throw them in. It's much healthier than buying ready-made yogurt with candied fruit pieces added. What should parents of students who live on campus ask if there is no refrigeration facilities? In this case, there is no problem in choosing room-temperature yogurt without added sugar. Although the probiotics have been inactivated and the nutrient density is slightly lower, it is still better than drinking sweet drinks every day. This is why we do not directly exclude room-temperature yogurt from the optional range.

Fresh-cut fruits and ready-to-eat vegetable strips ranked third. In fact, you don’t have to choose any rare varieties, just ordinary small tomatoes, cucumber strips, crisp peach chunks, and corn kernels. Cut them one night in advance and put them in a crisper box and put them in the refrigerator. Bring them to school the next day. After the third period, you can eat them out when you are hungry. They will make you feel full and supplement dietary fiber. A girl who was a freshman in high school told me that she replaced the grilled sausages that she must buy every day after school with small tomatoes and half a steamed corn. After half a year, the constipation problem that had troubled her for a long time was cured.

Salt-free original seaweed is good news for many picky eaters. One piece only has a few calories, and it can also supplement iodine. Children who don’t like to eat seaweed and seaweed can only eat two or three pieces a week, and two or three pieces each time are enough. Be careful not to buy the seasoned version with sesame filling and sprinkled with salt. The sodium content of that kind has more than tripled. Eating four or five slices is equivalent to eating half a bag of potato chips.

The last place of whole grain soda biscuits is "emergency money". For example, if you make up for classes on weekends until 8 p.m., and eat two pieces to fill your stomach when you are hungry and have a stomachache, it is much better than eating instant noodles or fried skewers. When choosing, you need to look through the ingredient list. There are shortenings and margarines that can be passed directly. The first three ingredients are preferred to be whole wheat flour, oat flour, and wheat germ.

In fact, there is no absolute "blacklist". When my nephew enters the top ten in grade, I will buy him a cup of full-sugar milk tea as a reward. Eating potato chips and fried chicken once in a while will not affect health at all, as long as you don't treat these high-fat and high-sugar foods as daily snacks. After all, it is normal for teenagers to be greedy. It is better to block it than to let it go. If you really want to prevent it from being touched, it will be easy for the children to save their pocket money to secretly buy Sanwu snacks, which is not worth the loss.

Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to mention that cheese sticks and protein bars that many parents ask about are also in the controversial area: If your child is an athlete who trains for more than 2 hours a day, it is no problem to choose a whey protein bar without added sugar to replenish energy. The protein intake of the average child's daily diet is enough. Eating too much will increase the burden on the kidneys.； Not to mention cheese sticks. Most cheeses on the market have less than 15% added content. The first three ingredients are water, sugar, and sodium caseinate. They don’t supplement much calcium, but they eat a lot of sugar. If you really want to supplement calcium, it is better to drink pure milk and eat original cheese.