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Snacking thoughts....

Written by Julie Kelly

March 13, 2014

The second most asked question I get after: "so, what do you eat for breakfast?" is: "so, what can I eat for snacks?"

When you switch to a real food ancestral health diet, a lot of "foods" that you relied on for convenience go right out the window. Packaged, fixed calorie, crunchy, salty, sweet snacks I'm looking at you! Now that you are back among the living and eating Food, you know the kind without ingredient labels, let me give you a few thoughts on snacking. 

You shouldn't need to. I know, people love their snacks. Mid morning, after lunch, heck even after dinner snacking has somehow become acceptable. The fact of the matter is this: if you are eating enough at meal time, with enough fat and enough protein, you should be able to go quite a while without needing a snack. So, I'm not anti-snack, I'm just really pro-eating-enough/the right stuff-at-meal-time. Pay attention to this if you find yourself reaching for snacks more than once a day. You know what your snack needs are, but make sure they are needs and not just a sign you are missing some critical macro or micro nutrients, in your larger meals. 

That being said, my husband is usually ready to eat my arm off when he gets home from a long work day followed by a long training ride. If dinner isn't quite ready I'll make him a quick snack bowl to fend him off. The other time snacks become useful is when we are at home on a weekend and our meal times are thrown off by a late breakfast or skipping lunch.

The first photo above captures a pretty typical snack...sauerkraut, red cabbage, Dino kale, chopped apple, green onion, and kipper snacks, with Dijon mustard, balsamic, olive oil, and MCT oil. Most of it was out already, as I was cooking dinner, I just threw some in a bowl and added the kippers. 

This snack was a real treat: precooked butternut squash that I had on hand, with kale and mushrooms cooked in the bacon fat from the bacon I put on top. Even with cooking a few pieces of bacon, this snack took 5 minutes to prepare. Something about making someone bacon makes them feel really special, give it a whirl. Both of these snacks would be really easy to throw in a container and carry with you to work or wherever.