What’s a healthy snack?
This is the question people say out load. But most of the time, what we really want to know, without having to say it is:
If I eat this thing that I know isn’t good for me, how bad is it really? Like on a scale from 1 to 10, how worried should I really be if I eat this thing?
Most of the time, we know what’s healthy and what’s not so good for us. Even if we don’t want to admit it.
There’s a lot of foods that we should be eating a whole lot of all the time – like fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes. You know, foods that grow. Foods that didn’t make their way through a few rounds of factory processing. Foods that look pretty close to the way you’d find them in nature.
There are also things that are best eaten little to almost none of the time. Ever heard of a “sometimes food”? That’s what these are.
Think chips, cookies, a large frappe with whipped cream. These are definitely sometimes foods, and sometimes foods are definitely NOT snacks.
SO HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE EATING A GOOD AND HEALTHY SNACK?
Snacks can be the hardest thing to figure out because we usually use a snack as an excuse to indulge.
Here’s how you do it. Ask yourself:
If I had to make that food myself, from scratch, how often would I be eating it?
This isn’t a trick question. But there is a trick to it. When we talk about preparing that food from scratch, we’re talking about every single ingredient that goes into that food.
Think about french fries. Or potato chips.
If every time you wanted some fries you had to buy the potatoes. Then peal the potatoes. Then you had to cut them up and heat up the oil. Then you had to fry the potatoes and then clean all that up. If you had to do all that for a handful of crunchy fried potatoes, how often would you be eating them?
Think about cake. Or cookies.
If every time you wanted a piece of cake, you had to pull out all the baking ingredients and do all the measuring and mixing.
Then you had to get it into the oven and then get it out of the oven. You had to pull out of all the ingredients for the icing and then make that. Then you had to wait until the cake cooled before you could frost the cake.
If you had to do all that before you got the chance to have a slice, how often would you eat cake?
I know this sounds extreme, but think about the bigger point here.
It used to take a lot of work to make things that weren’t all that healthy. And because they took so much work to make these special things, we considered them to be special foods we only ate sometimes.
Most of us sure couldn’t afford to eat that much of them, and when we did we knew it would be a long time before we did it again.
Candy was a treat. Ice cream happened on a special occasion. If you wanted cake, you had to bake a cake.
Sweetened drinks happened way less than water, or even milk, because you had to afford to get that sugar to sweeten your lemonade.
You know how miserable and expensive and time-consuming it would be if you had to squeeze your own apple every single time you wanted some apple juice?
Sweet things came from naturally sweetened things like fruit. Fat came from things that naturally had fat, like eggs or coconut or fresh meat. These were the whole foods you didn’t have to do anything to – just eat and enjoy.
Bottom line. If you want to know how often you should be eating something, think about how long it would take you to make it.
If the answer is you wouldn’t do it every day then you know that’s a sometimes food. Now it’s your job to only eat it sometimes.
Knowing what’s what is easy, doing what’s right is way harder.
Want more help getting your snack life together?
Check out this essential snack hack.
And this guide to healthy snacking on the go.