23 Grain-Free and Dairy-Free Snacks
When we are looking for ‘healthy’ snacks, it can be a real minefield out there! Firstly, let’s deal with the slippery elusive term “healthy”. As a health coach, I see it’s one of the most overused, perhaps manipulated terms of our era! The food manufacturing and marketing industries prey on our deep seeded desires to be healthy and dress up their processed boxed garbage with flashy health slogans to play up their products best features, otherwise known as ‘healthwashing’. It’s very convenient that as a culture, we are confused about what is healthy. This confusion is convenient to the food marketing and manufacturing industries. Confusion makes us suggestable, and overall, complacent when choosing our food at the supermarket. It gets so confusing we are left needing to trust that the food industry, and the bodies that govern their marketing, have got it right.
Unfortunately, big companies have big pockets for serious lobbying and compromises are always made with labelling regulations.
So, let’s start right there – What is ‘healthy’ when it comes to food choices? For me, to regard a food as being healthy, it has to offer lots of great benefits to my body. Simply just doing “more good than harm” is not enough for me. For it to be ‘healthy’ my body has to thank me for eating it and get me one step closer to optimal health. Examples would be vegetables, eggs and high-quality meat and fish.
Some foods are neutral, your body doesn’t need them because from an evolutionary perspective, they haven’t been in our food supply for long enough for us to have developed a biological dependency. Examples may be hummus, avocados, organic mayonnaise, nuts or even mushrooms. Maybe they offer only a little in the way of nutrients, perhaps they enhance flavours or add texture and variety, which we do enjoy, but also, they don’t directly harm your body, they just fill a gap in your stomach and we get a few health benefits from them.
And then some ‘foods’ are just downright rubbish, fit only for the landfill, not even suitable for me to feed to my lovely free-range chickens. They bless me with daily supply of free-range organic health promoting eggs and are worthy of great nourishment! I’m sure I don’t need to give you examples of these!
To keep things simple, it’s easiest to regard foods which are closest to the way nature produced it, as the healthiest. And the further they move down the “processed” continuum, the less healthy they become. Some examples…. Fresh free-range non-GMO organic chicken thighs. Uber Healthy! Your body can do lots of wonderful building with the amino acids in that! …. Canned chicken in spring water…… reasonably healthy but not as good as the fresh variety…. Deep fried chicken nuggets filled with flours, processed oils, thickeners, starches, dextrose (sugar), maltodextrin (more sugar), processed salts, and acidity regulator. Just outright not healthy. The more humans have messed with the food, the less like food it actually is. Unfortunately, we have a way of really messing things up!
The bottom line is that plants should be our go-to foods. The human diet is fundatmentally “plant-centric”. We have evolved for millions of years on mostly plant, with smattering of meat and a few other items. So ‘plants’ should be the first thing we consider when we feel hungry. (Well, actually the second thing. Water is really the first and most important element we need.) It is believed that historically, homo-sapiens consumed up to 200 different plant species in a normal year. 200! Can you even imagine? Most people could probably count the number of species they consume on just their fingers and toes. This is what we have evolved on and now thrive on. Plants and meat, really. Perhaps some fish. Rarely nuts and seeds. Grains, well, not really. And that brings us to another blog post. For another day. Grains are not an ideal food for humans as they haven’t been in our supply for long and offer far less nutrients than vegetables, animal meats and eggs. Grains fill tummies nicely but don’t offer much nourishment in return. They also often also create reactions in our body due to the presence of anti-nutrients – chemical defences that protect against being digested that can lead to damage to the gut wall or inflammation in our bodies. Grains should be consumed in small quantities at best, so for that reason, I have left them out of the ideas below.
Finally, I have also left dairy products out of this idea list. So, todays list is only Grain-Free and Dairy-Free Snacks. Dairy is also not ideal for humans to be consuming. It gives a lot of people tummy cramps and for many people, it increases inflammation in their body causing them to produce excess phlegm. Even if you think you are relatively symptom free after drinking baby-cow juice products, there are other long-term consequences if excessively eaten by any human being. As a society, we can be quite reliant on dairy for flavour, creaminess and texture, so I it can be more challenging to find snack ideas that are diary-free.
So, without any further jibber-jabber, let’s crack into the list of Grain-Free and Dairy-Free Snacks!
- Smoked Chicken Quiche (recipe to come)
- Celery with Almond Butter
- Chicken-Salad-on-the-Run (chicken, celery, red onion, organic sugar-free mayo and baby spinach)
- Green Smoothie (1/2 a cucumber, 2 sticks of celery, ¼ avo, 1 x apple, mint, kale)
- Kumera Chips
- Broccoli and Kale Soup (recipe to come)
- Olives
- Devilled Eggs (mash yolks with dairy free mayonnaise and a smidge of curry powder)
- Prunes Wrapped in Bacon
- Seed Crackers with Avocado or Guacamole and Tomatoes
- Mini Frittatas
- Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus
- Kale Chips
- Seasoned Steamed Veggies with Olive Oil
- Tuna Lettuce Cups (radish, celery, organic sugar-free mayo in cos lettuce)
- Vege Sticks with Hummus
- Smoked Salmon with Kale Pesto on Cucumber Slices
- Cubed Eggplant with Homemade Spicy Relish
- Sushi Rolls
- Golden Crumbed Cauliflower (recipe to come)
- Fresh Green Beans with Smoked Salmon Dairy Free Pate (made with soaked and blended cashews, lemon juice, smoked salmon, salt & pepper)
- Organic Miso soup (organic to be sure it’s not GMO)
- A handful of mixed nuts
Please share any other Grain-Free and Dairy-Free Snacks in the comments. Healthier communities together all!