Healthy Christmas Snacks for Kids
Holiday Star Snacks
Sandwiches make healthy Christmas snacks for kids. With a bit of creativity, even the most mundane sandwiches are made festive for your children. Use healthy ingredients in holiday colors, like romaine lettuce, baked ham and ripe red tomatoes, for the sandwiches. Instead of trimming the crust, use a star-shaped cookie cutter to cut out sandwich shapes. Keep the sandwiches as healthy as possible by using only low-fat cheese and whole grain or multi-grain bread. For a bit of a twist, use whole wheat tortillas to make healthy veggie and cheese quesadilla stars.
Christmas Tree Pizzas
Kids love pizza, particularly when they make it themselves. Top individual-sized pizza crusts with pizza sauce and low-fat mozzarella cheese. Use thinly sliced green bell pepper to make a Christmas tree on each pizza, and let the children decorate the branches with sliced green olives and pimento. Cut small stars from a yellow bell pepper to top each tree. For a different taste, use pesto sauce instead of pizza sauce, or substitute flat bread or focaccia for the pizza crust.
Cream Cheese Nibbles
Low-fat cream cheese is a healthy snack option for kids. A 1-oz. serving of low-fat cream cheese contains only 56 calories and 2 g of protein, and is a good source of vitamin A and calcium. Fill a piping bag with a mixture of low-fat cream cheese and chopped green olives with pimentos, and pipe the cream cheese into a variety of foods, like snow peas, celery stalks, hollowed-out cherry tomatoes or cucumber boats, to create a healthy red-and-green holiday platter guaranteed to delight the little ones.
Peanuts and Pretzels
Peanuts and pretzels make the perfect holiday pick-me-up. Dip one end of a pretzel rod in creamy peanut butter to coat, and roll in red, green and white sprinkles. Low-fat peanut butter contains 146 calories in a 1-oz. serving, one pretzel rod is only 32 calories and 1 tsp. of sprinkles contains only 11 calories, making these very healthy Christmas snacks for kids.
Festive Turkey Sliders
Give the kids a hot midday snack with low-fat turkey sliders. Mix ground turkey with chopped green and red bell pepper and the seasonings of your choice. Serve the sliders on whole-grain dinner rolls topped with a dab of ketchup and a slice of dill pickle. A 2-oz. turkey patty contains under 100 calories, 10 g of fat, 22 g of protein and 9 percent of the recommended daily allowance of iron. If you want to keep down the carbohydrates, use the turkey mixture to make mini meatballs. Skewer each meatball with a toothpick and serve with small bowls of ketchup and barbecue sauce.
References
Self Nutrition Data: Low-Fat Cream Cheese
Calorie-Counter.net: Sprinkles
Calorie Gallery: Pretzel Rods
Self Nutrition Data: Reduced Fat Peanut Butter
About.com Calorie Count: Cooked Ground Turkey
