Manassas Park Community Matters Blog Post - Family focused Healthy Snack Ideas – By Sue Jurjevic

Our generation and those to come are all about being “on-the-go”. With the desire to have balanced lives, we focus on learning, being active and social actvities; not just for ourselves but also for our children. We have work and the children have school and often lose time for ourselves. When we are busy, it is difficult to eat healthy and be prepared. I would like to share with you a few ideas that bring the family together as a team and offer healthy eating habits.

We are always looking for ways to make things easier or to get as much done in a short amount of time. So why not take “family” time to prepare for the week ahead. Take a Friday night for instance; a perfect time for “movie/ game” night. Popping popcorn, watch movies, play board games is all about hearing about each others week, having fun and spending time together. Now, let’s put a twist on it. While you are popping popcorn make extra and have your children help you to put it into Ziploc bag or snack container and add dried fruit (raisins, banana chips, etc.). That time together can be spent connecting after a busy week, develops skills for small children, encourages healthy eating and prepares for the upcoming week’s snacks.

Salad night is another wonderful time- it is a healthy, quick and easy meal with added benefits. You can have your children rinse the vegetables, break up easy veggies for the salad, tear up lettuce. While preparing the salad; it is a good time to pack up individual serving size snacks for the week, spend time together and discuss the upcoming week, and encourage healthy eating. You can also have a baking party with your family and make healthy snacks to pack individually; you can also pack up dried cereal and pretzels.

Eating healthy is possible with time saving tips, and preparation can be done as a team. These examples also encourage independence your child can have a special container- decorate a “snack” box and or area in the cupboard and the refrigerator for their snacks. They will be able to make choices (both being healthy) on what they want for snack, and be able to pack it themselves because it is already pre packaged.

Be sure all snacks are Nut and Peanut free this helps when packing snacks for school.