Snacks

Traditional diet lore says snacks are bad. Eating between meals is bad. Indulging is bad. I personally think snacks are the perfect place to indulge yourself. Snacks are little. If they aren't, they aren't snacks. You can't count a pizza as a snack, or even a piece of pizza as a snack. That is a meal. Snacking is another area where we need to get real with ourselves

Hmm. I wondered what the dictionary said a snack is: "A hurried or light meal. Food eaten between meals."

Uh, oh. With this definition, I could do an end run around my diet by having endless quick snack-meals. To prevent this, I created my own definition of a snack: "A small portion of a single food eaten between meals to take the edge off of hunger or to savor a taste."

My rule was to have no more than one snack between any two meals. And no more than three meals a day. And no eating after 8 PM. Okay, too detailed, but I had to anticipate all my own tricky thinking. You want a snack to taste good but not be so compelling that you go crazy. By keeping the snack to a single food, you taste that food without distraction. Plus, you are not subjected to the alluring taste complexities that a sandwich or a bowl of cereal can present.

During my weight-loss diet, these were my favorite snacks:

• A small apple
• Raw carrots (one big one or 3 midgets)
• Dried cranberries (about 10)
• Par-cooked broccoli and cauliflower (1/2 cup)
• An orange or two tangerines or a kiwi
• Raw mushrooms (handful)
• Blueberries (handful)
• Dark chocolate chips (about 10)
• Almonds, both salted and unsalted (about 5)
• Cherry tomatoes (about 5)

The carrots, apples, and almonds were crunchy, which seemed to subdue hunger pangs, or at least make me chew more. The cranberries were tangy and chewy, not just sweet. Broccoli and cauliflower are my favorite vegetables (also my dog's). The citrus gave me a shot of juice and tang, as did the tomatoes and the blueberries. The kiwis and mushrooms are weird, which I like (that sense of fun). If I craved salt, I ate the salted almonds, if not, I chose the unsalted ones. Sometimes I combined the chocolate chips with a few almonds to make a sort of candy.

I didn't include any cheese because I gave up dairy for my diet, but a chunk of cheese could be a very nice snack. A spoonful of peanut butter. A fruit juice popsicle. You notice I didn't mention a cookie, or a soft drink, or corn nuts, or beef jerky. This blog is about a healthy diet, so why would I talk about snacks that are not healthy, no matter how favorite they are? You're on your own with those.