There has always been this misconception that you can eat what you want when you're young and get away with it. For many kids and young adults, getting old is light years away and so they feel it's nothing they need concern themselves with right now. But as my grandfather used to say; you're a long time old! Quite often, the bad eating habits we form when we are young play a big part in our general health when we grow older. Therefore, why not look at healthy eating at a young age, and in particular learn to eat healthy treats, as it's these in-between nibbles that can often wreak the most havoc with our health in the long term.
Food development has come a long way in recent years, and healthy treats are no longer the tasteless, drab health snacks that they used to be. Both "nutritious" and ?delicious? snacks are found all over the supermarket shelves but it's knowing what they are and where they are, that befuddles most folks.
In a world where we eat when we're not hungry (this is a lot more common than you may think), there are but 2 options. The first is to learn to recognize the difference between eating to curb hunger pains and eating purely for comfort, and then work on reducing that compulsive snacking. The second choice (if stopping snacking between meals is not an option), requires you need to identify the healthy treats from the unhealthy ones.
On a very basic level, it's sugary, salty, and fatty foods that give us the most grief. With a little education on what to look for and what to look out for, we can soon change our bad habits. Here are a few guidelines on healthy treats:
Sliced (always more appealing!) fruits such as bananas, apples, grapes, water melon etc. Many of these treats seem tastier when chilled in the refrigerator. Veggie trays have lots of vitamins, calcium and protein and are great for when you have the nibbles. Use a low calorie tasty dip to bring out the flavors in your assortments.
Deserts can be a real gut buster. Often there is desert left over from previous meals and it's just too tempting every time we open the fridge door not to grab a piece, a slice, or a portion of yesterday's puddings. Here we can change the kind of deserts we prepare so that when we do reach for those leftovers, we are getting healthy treats as opposed to unhealthy ones.
All fruits can be used in your deserts whether fresh, canned, dried, or frozen. Low fat yogurt poured over fruit is simply delicious, and a very healthy treat that most folks enjoy. Another good snack is angel food cake. There are many healthy angel food cake recipes online to choose from. Don't think you can't have a healthy dollop of ice cream either because you can. There is ice cream that is low in fat with not more than 3 grams of fat per half cup.
These are just a few pointers but you probably get the idea. You can literally build a whole volume of great healthy treats for you and your family. Your bodies will certainly thank you for it and if you have kids, and can get them into healthy eating habits and healthy treats at a young age, you have an even bigger incentive to changing your eating habits.
