Pizza, desserts, and snacks comprise 1/3 of a child’s total daily caloric intake, according to The National Institute of Health. Add one birthday party and the total caloric intake usually jumps to around 2/3 of the child’s caloric intake. Traditionally, most of it sugar in the form of cake, ice cream, cookies and other fatty, sugary snacks.
Parents increasingly aware of the importance of heart health and weight maintenance as a lifetime habit help their kids from an early age learn the difference between healthy snacks and snacks composed of empty calories.
It so happens those empty calories, sugar, are the snacks that cause children to leave birthday parties wound up with a couple hours worth of hyperactivity to kill.
There are healthy snack alternatives for birthday parties. Just plan ahead and think like a kid. Birthday party snacks can be fun and healthy.
Wash hands, and then let the kids play with their snacks. That’s right. Cut up fruit in geometric shapes that can be used to create crazy faces on a solid color paper plate. Add a few nuts and cheese slices so the kids can really get creative. Give a prize to the child who turns their birthday party snack into the craziest fruity faces.
Children will not rebel if you have prepared individual fruit cups ahead of time. Children actually love to sit down to strawberries, bananas, grapes, and apple slices.
Add a yogurt dip, because kids love to dip. Besides, it’s a birthday party, why not get a little messy. There are healthy yogurt dip recipes online, which use vanilla yogurt as a base. However, there are plenty of scrumptious fat free, low sugar yogurts available in a variety of flavors.
Fruit is a great healthy birthday party snack if you provide several flavors of yogurt and let the children choose their dip. Kids not only enjoy the variety. They enjoy sharing what they find to be their favorite and least favorite flavors.
All you have to do to provide this healthy birthday snack alternative is chill the Gogurt. Kids enjoy the tubed yogurt and it comes in a variety of flavors to suit all tastes.
Make a healthy trail mix and let the party attendees help. Provide plenty of raisins, nuts, dried fruit, shredded coconut and a low sugar cereal like Cheerios.
The birthday boy or girl can help you make the healthy snack before the party and put it in individual plastic bags, or you can have everyone participate. Throw the goodies in a large mixing bowl. Once everyone has had a chance to make a contribution, gently toss the mixture together and serve the kids. Offer some of their original trail mix as a take home gift from the birthday party.
My sister introduced this healthy snack at my niece’s birthday party, now we serve it at every event, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is that good. Kid’s love it too.
Blend peeled apples, fresh strawberries, banana slices, sliced pineapple, and a spritz of lemon and lime juice. Once blended you have a healthy fruit snack children and adults will enjoy.
Serve with cinnamon tortilla chips. Spray tortilla chips with cooking spray and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake until crispy. Approximately ten minutes.
This is an old favorite for healthy snacking, but it’s still popular with kids. It calls for one of their favorite ingredients, peanut butter.
Cut celery sticks into 3-4 inch slices. Fill them with peanut butter and sprinkle with raisins.
A healthy, alternative, in case of peanut allergies is to fill the celery sticks with low-fat flavored cream cheese. Pineapple and strawberry are great alternatives. You may still use raisins or nip strawberries into small pieces to place on top. These look great, taste great, and are a healthy alternative snack for your birthday party.
