Are you looking for health snacks to make with your kids?
My small kids, aged 5 and 7, love treats! One of the things we enjoy doing on a Sunday afternoon is making healthy snack balls. This is a great way to make sure they get the pleasure and fun of their treats, while also knowing what exactly is in them and how much sugar! What’s more, adults love them too, with my wife eating variations of these for breakfast quite often too.
No cooking required, so kids can roll up their sleeves and get busy making these balls!
This couldn’t be easier.
The base for the balls is oats.
Then you can add all sorts of things ranging from crushed nuts, such as almonds or walnuts to seeds, such as sunflower, linseed or pumpkin seeds. Some dried fruits, such as raisins are a great way to add sweetness. As an extra treat you can also add a few dark chocolate bits. (Some children and adults have nut and other allergies, so take caution in regard to this.)
Mix everything into the bowel together, with the oats making up approximately 1/2 to 2/3 of the mixture.
Then you can add a few tablespoons of water and some coconut oil if you have some handy, until the mixture is just sticky enough to stick together. Then shape the mixture into small walnut sized balls and put on a plate in the fridge to set.
Kids and sugar intake
We all know that too much sugar is bad for us. In fact, Public Health England figures show that 4-10 year old children consume the average weight of a 5 year old in sugar per year, equivalent to 15 sugar cubes per day.
In a campaign to help parents control how much sugar kids eat, Public Health England have outlined how many grams of sugar a day children should be having per day:
- 4-6 year olds: 19grams (5 sugar cubes)
- 7-10 year olds: 24grams (6 sugar cubes)
- 11 years olds +: 30grams (7 sugar cubes)
It’s not just the sugar to watch out for
One of the huge benefits of making treats with kids, instead of buying packets of biscuits and sweets, is that you can avoid bad fats, additives, various types of sugars and make them as healthy as possible. The other thing I love to see with my own children, is that they are learning from a young age how to cook food from scratch and don’t expect to buy everything in a packet, which sadly is the way shopping is going.
