Saying Goodbye to Ultra-Processed Snacks
Unsurprisingly, if you look through lists of the most popular snacks in America, you’ll find that the overwhelming majority fall into the 40FRESH Nope category. Chips. Crackers. Cereal. Most lists have the top three spots rounded out with a variety of candy. When we snack, we tend to reach for things that are salty or sweet and, above all, convenient.
Take a look through your food journal for the past 8 days and examine your snacking habits. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your snacking habits consist of more than apples and unsalted peanuts. The reality is that the cheapest and most convenient snacks available to us are mostly ultra-processed.
To make a successful transition to healthy snacking, let’s go through a few tips that will help set us up for success.
Today’s Checklist
If you’re following along with the 40FRESH Challenge, here’s your homework for today:
Read this post
Review your snacking habits
Create a snacks menu
Shop for your snacks
Make Unhealthy Snacks Unattractive
Remember day 5 when we cleaned up our pantry? Hopefully you were able to make some changes to how your foods are organized so that all your unhealthy snacks require a bit more effort to access. This would be a great time to go back and put that into practice if you haven’t already done so. If you can completely get rid of all those tempting snack options, even better.
I can’t stress enough how important this change is! The more accessible unhealthy options are, the more difficult it is going to be to stick to your health mantra and make good choices. As habits expert James Clear says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your system.” When you’re feeling tired from a long day, you’re going to reach for the thing that’s easiest. Set up your environment for success by making the healthiest options the most accessible.
Sweet Snack Replacements
The best replacement that I’ve found for sweet snacks is with nature’s candy: fruit. It’s important to find a fruit that you like and that won’t take you a ton of time to prepare. If it takes longer to prepare your healthy snack than it does to reach your unhealthy snack, you can bet your ass that when you’re feeling tired, lazy, or grumpy, that’s what you’re going to reach for. Here are a few of my favorite convenient fruits:
- Grapes
- Raspberries
- Blueberries
- Strawberries
- Bananas
- Apples
- Pears
Fruit damages easily and you’ll need to take snacks with you when you’re out of the house for an extended period of time. If you don’t already have some decent food storage containers, now would be a great time to invest in some. We recommend these ones with built in strainers. For fruits like apples and pears, it can also help to have a slicing tool that minimizes your prep time.
You’ll notice that fruits like oranges, grapefruit, kiwi, and more didn’t make the list above. If these are your favorites, feel free to add these to your menu. However, since these do require a bit of extra prep work, you may want to take care of that extra work in advance so it’s ready to go when you have a craving.
An equally delicious and hearty replacement for sweet snacks is smoothies. They can be quite filling, too, especially if you add ingredients like yogurt. If this sounds more appealing to you than a chunk of fruit, give this green juice smoothie a whirl. You’ll want a high speed blender for the best results. Although this takes a bit of time, you can prepare several drinks at once and have them all ready to go in portable smoothie cups.
Savory Snack Replacements
The top savory snacks all share some common properties. Most of them are crunchy and salty and, of course, they’re convenient. To be frank, it’s a bit harder to replace these items with options that are both healthy and quick. That said, we do have a few options that fall into that category, so let’s take a look.
Unsalted Nuts
Assuming you’re not allergic to nuts, these are a great option for snacking because they’re incredibly filling and packed with protein and Omega-3 fatty acids that are good for your heart. Even better, they are in the 40FRESH Always category, so you can eat as much as you like. I recommend stocking up on a few different nut varieties as it’s easy to get burned out on a single variety. This unsalted nut blend from Costco is a good choice.
Unsalted Brown Rice Cakes
Although they may not be as tasty as nuts, another 40FRESH Always option is unsalted rice cakes. Make sure you’re finding ones whose only ingredient is rice, like these ones.
Unsalted Peanut Butter
Need something to pair with those rice cakes? Unsalted peanut butter can be a great option and it also goes well with other things like apples or celery. Or just eat a spoonful by itself! However you eat it, make sure you’re choosing an option that’s made from 100% peanuts and no added ingredients, like this one from Adam’s.
Oatmeal
A 1/4 cup serving of oatmeal heated up in the microwave for 1 minute with 1/2 a cup of water makes for a delicious and quick snack. You can even add in some blueberries or a dash of brown sugar to liven it up. We like Bob’s Red Mill quick cooking oats.
40FRESH Limited Snacks
If you want to use some of your 40FRESH Limited budget for snacks, you’ll have a few more options available to you. We recommend sticking to the 40FRESH Always options above for most of your snacking, but if you truly have a hankering for something different, here’s a few options to consider:
- Freshly-made cheeses like gouda and white cheddar (pairs well with fruit!)
- Sourdough (refer to your grocery store recon for acceptable options)
- Natural beef jerky (like this one)
Create Yourself a Snacks Menu
With the options above in mind, go ahead and craft yourself a snack menu for the week. If you can afford a bit of time to organize these so they are ready to pick up and eat whenever you’re hungry, you’ll have a much better chance for success. You’ll be starting your snacking habit tomorrow, so take the time today to get ready.
Up Next...
The past nine days have involved a lot of learning and not a ton of changes to our habits. This is the end of the planning phase. In the days ahead, you’ll be totally transforming your eating habits. We’ll do this in increments, tackling one meal at a time until you’ve completely migrated to a 40FRESH diet.
Find a pad of sticky notes and write out your health mantra on a few notes. Put these notes on your bathroom mirror, in your fridge, in your pantry, in your office, and anywhere else you frequent. This will act as a visual reminder of the new identity that you’re forming as a person who makes healthy choices. You can keep the food journal going if you like, but you should have a pretty good idea of what you’ve been eating at this point and what might need to change. See you tomorrow for the start of the layering phase!