Do you dread sending healthy party snacks to your child’s school? Gone are the days where you can send cookies, cakes and brownies to the class without someone getting upset over it.
After all, the school has rules on what foods can be brought to school and then you’ve got the parents who may think your choice isn’t healthy enough or is even too healthy.
Then, you have to worry about allergies. What child in your child’s class is allergic to peanuts, milk or eggs? Are there any kids that are allergic to gluten? It’s all so difficult these days that it can be tough for a parent to send a healthy party school snack.
With a little research and talking with school administrators, you can come up with the best possible healthy snack to bring to your child’s next school party.
Why Should You Serve Your Child’s Class Healthy Party School Snacks?
Snacks are an important part of a child’s daily nutrition – and a good healthy snack ensures a lifetime of healthy eating habits, which can reduce the chances of developing various illnesses and conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, etc. From 1977 to 1996, children had a 120 calorie per day increase because of the consumption of unhealthy snacks.
What Makes Up A Healthy Snack?
When it comes to choosing a healthy party school snack, there are certain guidelines you need to follow such as:
- Calories – High nutritional value between 150 and 300 calories.
- Fat – Go for low fat, low saturated fats that don’t include any no trans-fat. Your daily fat calorie intake is no more than 30 percent.
- Sodium – People consume an excess amount of salt, most of which comes from packaged food consumption. Nobody should consume more than 2,400 milligrams of sodium per day.
- Sugar – No more than five grams of sugar, as the limit is 25 grams a day.
You want to make sure that the snack foods you bring to your child’s school include all the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that are necessary for their daily diet.
3 Key Tips To Ensuring You Offer Healthy Party School Snacks
Keep The Snacks Simple
There’s no reason to have every single mineral or vitamin in the healthy snack. Focus on the big picture, not every single ingredient or calorie. Go for snacks that involve two or more food groups like protein, fruit, dairy, vegetables, healthy fats and whole grains.
Combine Snacks Foods
When it comes to food combinations, consider foods that go together such as peanut butter and apples (provided peanut butter is not banned from your school), veggies and cheese or something similar.
Give The Snack Some Coolness Factor
When you bring snacks to school, consider bringing some coolness to it. Perhaps you can create superheroes out of the snacks or, with Halloween, you can create spiders or ghosts from them.
5 Healthy Party School Snacks You Should Consider
There are an array of healthy party school snacks you can take to your child’s school, but remember that what you choose will be dependent upon what you can and can’t bring to the school.
Graham Crackers and Apple Cider
One of the best healthy school snacks you can bring to your child’s fall party is graham crackers with a bit of apple cider. When choosing the graham crackers go with either plain or cinnamon, making sure it’s made of whole grains. Each child should get at least one graham cracker and a six-ounce glass of apple cider.
Pita Wedges with Marinara Sauce
What kid doesn’t love pizza? Consider buying two bags of whole wheat pita bread and cut them into triangles (depending on the size, you should get about six triangles total per pita). Give the kids three slices of pita with two tablespoons of marinara sauce – opting for low sodium if you can find it.
Mini Veggie Crisps
What’s great about mini veggie crisps is that they give kids the feeling that they’re eating regular potato chips but they’re made with vegetables. You can also use whole grain rice cakes and spread on vegetable cream cheese and some kind of vegetable to boot.
Whole Bananas
Bananas as the best healthy party snack food because it’s so portable. You can send them a couple of days in advance if they’re really green so they can ripen. Each child can get a whole small banana or half of a large one.
Unsweetened Applesauce Cups
When it comes to healthy party snack foods, an easy, low-cost snack is the unsweetened applesauce cups. They’re ideal because they can last for quite some time, should the class have any leftovers and they can easily be found in grocery stores.
Don’t make choosing your child’s healthy party school snacks harder than it needs to be. If you need some help, consider talking with your child’s school to find out what foods you need to avoid – for the sake of allergies – and what foods they’d rather see in the classroom. And, if you need some ideas of healthy snack foods, you can consider any of the above to serve up during the next Christmas, Halloween or Valentine’s Day party.
