Discover 50 delicious healthy sugar-free snacks that will help your kids stop their Oreo and Goldfish crackers habit.
The best healthy sugar-free snacks for children after school, are perfect for adults too. All these snacks are sugar-free, wheat-free, and naturally gluten-free.
If you want to begin reducing the junk carbs and raise lower-carb kids, how do you start? These healthy sugar-free snacks
Jump to:
How much sugar is in kid's snacks?
This is a great infographic showing how certain foods leave you crashing soon after eating them. So we may think bread, toast, and cereal fill our children up, but they will soon be hungry again. These foods feed them energy but no nourishment or nutrients.
The best foods are those based on good quality protein and good healthy fats. Sure children can have unprocessed carbs such as sweet potatoes and fruit but in limited amounts. It is the whole food approach that is important.
How to slowly cut back on sugar for kids
Tip 1: Serve savoury snacks, not sweet snacks
One of the trickiest things parents find when they go sugar-free or low carb is what to give children for after-school snacks. It's hard to change our mindset from giving our children sweet treats such as muesli bars, cereal/granola, toast and sugary spreads, cakes, or baking, to giving them savoury snacks.
Healthy sugar-free snacks need to be portable while driving to sports and activities. We are so used to having food on hand that has a long shelf life and comes in a packet.
Tip 2: Serve leftovers
Leftovers are under-utilised. They're easy and nutritious. Cook once, serve twice.
Very rarely do I have time to make pancakes after school, but if I do, I make a double or triple batch and keep them for their lunch boxes.
If you have the oven on, always cook an extra batch of sausages or chicken purely for the next few day's lunch or snacks.
It's about thinking differently, cooking extra, and making it as easy as you can for yourself.
Tip 3: Pack car snacks (to avoid emergency fast-food)
Make sure you have a ready supply of healthy snacks in the car to avoid those emergency situations where your children are hungry, ratty, and about to have a melt-down or tantrum. This inevitably leads to fast food to solve the situation.
Pack each child a little lunch box for the car to keep them happy, full and it helps contain any mess.
Have healthy sugar-free snacks in the car such as nuts, pork rinds, beef jerky, and sugar-free granola bars.
Tip 4: If you have picky eaters - stop snacking so often!
Try to cut down on how much and how often your children snack. It is so much easier to encourage children to eat a nutritious dinner when they're hungry.
Sometimes there is no other option, I'm realistic, but let's see if we can do the best we can as often as we can, then there is less pressure on the occasions when we can't.
Tip 5: Stop the preservatives - for happy kids
We are the first generation to grow up consuming so many preservatives and so many packaged snacks. Americans now spend more on snacks than meals.
If those preservatives are stopping the bacteria from growing in our food, what is it doing to the beneficial bacteria in our bodies? Our gut health is incredibly important with 75% of our serotonin (the happy hormone) and our immunity is made in our gut.
FREE download - healthy sugar-free snacks for kids.
Best sugar-free healthy snacks for kids
Sugar-free snack ideas: Sweet
Sugar-free snack ideas: Savoury
Sugar-free: Smoothies
Easy snacks: ready made
- 35 best low-carb snacks
- Eggs any which way. Boiled (boil 10 or so at a time to always have them on hand for snacks and lunches), fried, scrambled, poached. devilled eggs, paleo scotch eggs
- Cheese, cheese, cheese. Sticks, cubes, grated. Any old how but this is s great way to fill up children for longer
- Leftover dinners are KING!
- Beef jerky/biltong/pork crackling
- Berries and cream
- Avocado and salt
- Apple slices with peanut butter/tahini/almond butter etc
- Chopped up apple or pear with cinnamon sprinkled on top
- Canned/tinned tuna
For all the following recipes, head over to my recipe finder and subscribe fro FREE recipes when I post them.
Tips: How to raise sugar-free kids
- Take a look at my Top 10 Low-Carb Snacks
- Take a look at my Low-Carb Snacks recipe archives
- Top 35 Low-Carb Snacks
- Low-Carb Kids 1 - beginners guide, tips and tricks
- Low-Carb Kids 2 - ultimate 'school lunch planner' with free printable PDF
- Low-Carb Kids 3 - 2 weeks of my children's school lunches
- Low-Carb Kids 4 - how to make a low carb school lunch box and more ideas
- Low-Carb Kids 6 - an entire month of school lunch ideas
- Low-Carb Kids 7 - My guest post on Diet Dr, "How To Raise Children On Real Low Carb Food".
- Low-Carb Kids 8 - How to help your child eat real food - with an action plan
- Top 10 Myths Of Low-Carb Kids
Healthy lunchbox ideas
If you are wanting more ideas for sugar-free snacks and sugar-free lunchboxes, come and join me on my Facebook page Low-Carb Lunch Club and in my closed group - Low-Carb Lunch Box hacks. Come and join in the fun. I'll see you there.
The Ultimate LOW-CARB Lunchbox Book: This isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing things DIFFERENTLY!! - CLICK HERE
Dew
I have put my self on an special eating plan. No sugar, gluten free, no peanuts, no shadow veg,
I have an autoimmune disease and need to get back to the basics. But I'm trying not to stress because this is part of my problem. But watching one video after another lives the mind with what should I eat. I dont eat processed foods. I eat salads, saur kraut, chicken ect so something I guess I cant eat.