Introduction
As feeding experts, we regularly speak to parents about snacking. It comes up regularly as a question, and is also an area of feeding that can be tweaked to really benefit the nutrition your child is getting AND can help to improve their picky eating too. So if you’re looking for snack ideas for picky eaters you’ve come to the right place!
This blog will not only give you ideas, it goes one step further. If you can optimise how you approach snacks, this blog has the potential to improve your child’s picky eating habits at the same time. We’ll help give you some tips on putting snacks together but if you want to get to the top 10…. click here.
We should start by saying it is very hard to write a list of snacks that is going to cater to every single family and every single child (we are going to do that, so do read on). However, we know from many years of experience that the best way to approach a snack list is to teach you the best way to tackle snacks – that way you can think about the types of foods that your child eats and use our snack approach for your little one.
For example, some picky eaters LOOOOOOVE cheese whilst others gag even at the thought of it; so a list containing cheese would be no good for them. Other children love the crunch of a crisp whilst others shudder at all those spikey bits in their mouth.
How to approach snack ideas for picky eaters
If you want to know more about how to structure snacks into your day to reduce picky eating you can do so HERE. Or if you’re struggling with how to say no to snacks we’ve got you covered too.
Let’s jump in with the practical side of snacks and probably why you came here in the first place.
Snacks should ideally follow the ‘mini meal’ concept. It doesn’t have to be complicated but try to think about them like you would a meal; they will ideally include more than one food group. Why?
- Mixing a variety of food – fats, carbohydrate and proteins can help you child to feel more satisfied and will keep them going for longer. That means less requests for snacks so a potentially quieter life for you!
- The mix of food groups means you consciously offer a range of foods which often increases the range of vitamins and minerals your child is consuming every day. It’s very easy as parents to get stuck in a rut of just pulling a cereal bar out of your bag and handing it out. We get it, we all do that, but even in that situation by simply adding another food to the cereal bar you’re winning from a nutrition point of view.
- You’ll be potentially exposing your child to different foods more regularly which is one of the steps towards reducing picky eating. If your child eats 3 meals and 2 snacks that’s 5 opportunities every single day to get new foods in front of them (don’t worry about them not eating them – we’ll come on to that).
So what food makes a good snack for a picky eater?
Essentially anything from your child’s list of foods they are happy to eat! We’ve listed out lots of examples below – pick 1 food from 2 or 3 different groups for each snack time. So let’s take a look at our snack ideas for picky eaters, fear not we’re not going to be providing any crazy ideas, it’s all super simple and appealing for many picky kids.
Fruit and vegetables
Fresh, frozen, canned (in juice not syrup) and dried (be careful of portion size ½ tablespoon is plenty!) are all good to use.
Get adventurous here – think about how you present foods. Cut them into different shapes, try them hot, cold, grated, sliced, whole…. Whatever you fancy really. We aren’t ones for promoting ‘pinterest parenting’ BUT can you serve fruit inside a melon shell or make fruit star kebabs to promite some interest?
Dairy*
Yoghurt
Hard cheese
Cream cheese
Small cup of milk
*You can use plant based alternatives for all of the above but make sure that you check the packets to see if they have nutrients added. If they don’t they aren’t really bringing much to the table from a nutrition point of view. Look for ones with at least calcium and ideally iodine as well.
Protein
Sliced meat – ham, chicken, turkey etc
Cocktail sausage/veggie sausage
Crabstick
Hard boiled egg (or any egg!)
Hummus
Mini scotch egg
Peanut butter
Carbohydrates
Bread
Crumpets
English muffins
Breadsticks
Crackers
Biscuit
Crisps
Cereal bar
Cold plain pasta shapes
Hashbrown (stick it in the toaster in a toaster pocket!)
The sweet stuff
Chocolate, sweets, cake etc. We are not anti these types of foods. Helping a child to find confidence and curiosity with foods they currently dislike is as much about finding happy memories with their current safe foods as it is about understanding how to offer new foods. Do give your child these types of foods, but give them in small portions alongside other foods where possible. So maybe some square of chocolate on a plate with some strawberries. This will still be following the mini meal concept and everyone is happy!
Here’s 10 suggestions for you, using our mini meal concept to give you some inspiration. Hopefully there’s at least one or two there that your child will eat. Or that you can adapt to make it suitable for them. They might not seem very ‘exciting’ but that’s because they don’t need to be! Keep it simple, make your life easier, don’t spend too much money or energy on this part of parenting.
(In an ideal world we’d have some kind of fruit or vegetable at snacks times but we also know that lots of you are miles away from that at the moment so some of our suggestions don’t contain any. If you want to add ones that your child likes go for it!).
- Crumpet with peanut butter and sliced banana
- Cereal bar and an apple
- Cracker with sliced cheddar and cucumber
- Cocktail sausage with cherry tomato
- Crisps dipped in hummus
- ½ bagel with hard boiled egg
- Banana cut in half lengthways with jam/peanut butter spread along and raisins on top
- Ham & cream cheese roll ups (spread cream cheese onto a slice of ham and roll it up!)
- Mini scotch eggs with pepper sticks
- Digestive biscuit with slices of pear and a teaspoon of Nutella to dip into
Can you write a list of your child’s foods and come up with your own combinations?? We’d love to hear about them on our social media – find us on Instagram and send us a picture. We LOVE to receive them.
