Snacks under 100 calories
Mid-afternoon munchies playing havoc with your waistline? Midnight snack sabotaging your diet? Don’t let a snack-attack ruin your summer plans to shape-up with five clever hole-fillers under 100 calories that will banish those hunger pangs and that muffin top.
By Suzanne Elliott
Hummous and Carrot
Hummous has a rather unjustified reputation as a fatty food. Yes, it is can be calorific – if you eat a whole tub. But two tablespoons is just 70 calories. Scoop it up with one carrot, chopped into sticks (30 calories) and you’ve got a filling, nutritional snack. Hummous is packed full of protein courtesy of the chickpeas, along with plenty of fibre and a generous helping of skin-friendly fats by way of the tahini (sesame seed paste). Carrots haven’t escaped the dieters wrath either, with claims they’re full of carbs and sugar. And while carrots do indeed contain carbohydrates and naturally occuring sugars, they don’t actually make you fat. Instead, they’ll provide you with buckets of vitamin A and heart-protecting anti-oxidants. The old wives tale isn’t that far off the mark either, the beta-carotene in them helps protect vision, especially night vision.
Apple with Peanut Butter
As fantastic as fruit is for you, its naturally occuring sugars can still spark those insulin spikes that leave you feeling lack lustre and hungry again within the hour. Combing your mid-afternoon apple (47 calories) with ½ tablespoon of protein rich peanut butter (50 calories) helps slow down this sugar release, so stablising energy levels. Plus it’s rich, creaminess is oh-so–satisfying, so you won’t be gagging for your next snack half an hour later. Apples are an excellent source of fibre, and contain potentially cancer-combating nutrients and flavonoids that can improve the health of your lungs. Peanut butter meanwhile might be calorie dense, but as it also protein-packed and contains good, healthy fats that provide your skin with everything it needs to stay glowing and youthful. And it’s so much cheaper than Crème de la Mer!
Edamame Beans and Green Beans
Fancy a savoury snack but the only thing at hand is a bag of crisps? Stop that salt craving in its track with a bit of pre-planning. Boil 170g green beans and add 57g shelled edamame beans (98 calories.) Sprinkle with lemon juice and add a teeniest bit of salt for taste; simple and far better for your than a bag of crisps! Edamame beans, Posh’s snack of choice, are baby soybeans that pack a mean nutritional punch. These magic beans are an amazing source of protein, fibre and iron and also contain heart-friendly Omega-3. Green beans aren’t slackers in the nutritional department either, containing an abundance of vitamins C and K (essential for healthy blood) and bone-strenthening manganese. The lemon adds taste and an extra dose of vitamin C plus there’s evidence to suggest that citric fruit could spark up your metabolism and fat burning power.
Cheese Triangle and An Oatcake
Want to feed your cheese addiction but worried about the calories? Go old school with a cheese triangle (50 calories) that not only tastes as smooth and buttery as you remember, but gives you a decent calcium hit. Eat with a fibre packed oatcake for an energy boosting snack. Oatcakes (35 calories) are a super low GI food which means they’ll slowly drip feed your body with energy, so staving off hunger pangs and keeping your blood sugar levels nicely topped up over the afternoon.
Two Squares of Dark Chocolate
You’ll need to rev up your willpower for this snack, but if you think you can stick to just two delicious squares of chocolate (100 calories) then this makes a fab mid-afternoon treat. And you can banish any guilty thoughts: rich, dark chocolate has bucketloads of goodness hidden within. Like the best medicine you’ve ever tasted, chocolate is good for your heart and contains nearly eight times as many antioxdants as strawberries so it’ll mop up those free radicals that can damage the heart and speed up the aging process. Dark chocolate also keeps your heart and circulation ticking overly nicely, contains mood-boosting serotonin and endorphins and could lower cholesterol. Now you have plenty of excuses to indulge!
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