Friday, October 15, 2010

Snacks

If you prepare well and eat clean meals when you're hungry, you shouldn't need to snack in between. But for people starting paleo, it'll take some getting used to wean off snacks or, if you can't get a clean meal when you're hungry, you're going to need clean snacks.
When JJ and I have time, we make our own paleo snack kits.

It contained:
0.75oz of jerky
0.75oz of various nuts (macadamia, almonds, pecans, walnuts, pine nuts)
0.5oz of dried fruits (berries: blueberries, strawberries)

It's a pretty high caloric snack because of the fruits and nuts but at that time, it worked well for us. We've since dropped the dried fruits because it really doesn't help with weight loss but I think that kit was a good beginning. We have a Foodsaver so we can make more at a time but you can make batches in zip top bags too.

When we got lazy, we bought piles of Caveman Mix from Dick Stevens. However, they've since sold out (couldn't keep up with demand, didn't fulfill all orders, stories of bad customer service) so I'd look elsewhere.

Tom Windish's homemade jerky recipe is probably worth trying if you want to avoid sugar and preservatives in store bought jerky.

I'll talk more about coconut in another post but something that has worked for me and JJ lately is coconut flakes. We've seen these at Fox and Obel but you can also get them on Amazon for a decent price.

I keep a bag at work and a can of almonds too (preferably naked or the sea salt kind) for when I run out of paleo kits. When I have some time, our next batch of homemade paleo kits will have coconut flakes instead of dried fruit.

For ultimate portability, I stick with Trio bars. It has more sugar than I'd like but the ingredients are, for the most part, paleo:
Ingredients:
Cashew, Almonds, Pistachios, Blueberries, Sesame Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Dates, Raisins, Rice Malt, Natural Flavors, Evaporated Cane Juice and Sea Salt.

Starting with "Rice Malt", it gets a bit dicey (okay, what exactly is in "natural flavors" that it needs to be listed?) but it's better than Zone bars...
Remember, if you can't pronounce the ingredients, it's not paleo!

1 comment:

  1. thanks Donna this is great info. I recent bought some unsweetened coconut but wasn't sure what to do with it!

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