Derval O'Rourke: My top tips for healthy snacking

Plus my brown bread recipe with my favourite toppings

The key to healthy snacking is keeping it simple. 

This week I’m sharing tips on snacking and how you don’t have to overthink it - just keep it simple. These tips & snack suggestions are from Derval.ie expert - Nutrition & Lifestyle Coach, Cathay Dunleavy. This week's recipe is my brown bread recipe plus some topping ideas - perfect for snacking on.

Our snack foods should generally be easy to just put your hand on and eat without any prep at the time of eating. I come across a lot of people looking for new healthy snack ideas because they are bored of fruit, nuts etc. I will give some ideas here but I’d also encourage people to let go of the need for huge excitement around their snack foods. Just keep it really simple. There are enough kinds of fruits and veggies, varieties of crackers, nuts and seeds and flavours of hummus and nut butters to keep us from getting bored. These are the foods to base our snacks around. Keeping to whole foods as much as possible so that we are giving our bodies lots of what it wants and needs. That way we can help avoid the dreaded crap food cravings later on. Pay close attention to the combination of foods in your snacks ensuring a protein source at each snack e.g. nuts with fruit, nut butter on wholemeal rice cakes with fruit, hummus with raw veg sticks etc.