Are you someone who works for a nine-to-five or a working mom juggling between home and work? To cook and keep healthy foods all the time at home requires adequate time and concentration. And when you are busy with endless non-stop and non-ending chores, you need some quick and easy fix to move on with your life without any tension. Sometimes, due to all these issues, we get dependent on ready to eat foods or order food, ignoring the basic facts that they might have trans fat or junk foods. A healthy snack is a break that your mind deserves and a treat your senses desire. Since nutrition is crucial, it is somewhat required to know about some healthy pantry snacks and how to store them.
How Do You Stock Your Pantry with Healthy Snacks?
Whenever you are stocking up for your snacks, make sure your pantry has space for healthy snacks. You should make space for each category.
Keep grains and legumes together, canned and packaged goods on another shelf based upon their shelf life, likewise for others as well. In a nutshell, you must know where you have stacked and just keep it handy. For example, you can keep the tomatoes, be it crushed, diced or paste, together. Similarly, keep oil and vinegar together based upon their flavour and variant. Last but not least, condiments like ketchup mustard soya sauce should be kept on another shelf.
What Healthy Pantry Snacks Should You Stock?
A significant part of our lifestyle depends upon our eating habits. Moreover, we must not forget that eating healthy is always beneficial. However, most of the non-perishable snacks are filled with excessive sodium. Therefore, we need to step out and look for healthy pantry snack options. Let’s look at some non-perishable snacks that you should keep in your pantry.
1. Peanut Butter
When you are looking for a healthy pantry snack, you should consider eating peanut butter. Peanut butter is a high protein-packed butter made of ground peanuts, often roasted first and then blended into a paste. This butter is an excellent source of vitamin E, vitamin B6 magnesium and manganese. Not only this, it contains good fat and helps maintain cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure; it also manages the level of hormones in our body and lowers the risk of heart disease.
2. Sunflower Seeds
You might have come across many grocery stores that have packed sunflower seeds. They are white in color and have a tender texture with high nutritional value. Based on your taste, you can buy them raw or roasted. Sunflower seeds come with several health benefits, including preventing high blood pressure; it also helps reduce chronic inflammation since it contains vitamin E and flavonoids. It is incredibly healthy for the body since it helps reduce the rate of cardiovascular diseases and boost energy simultaneously.
3. Popcorns
When we look for non-perishable snacks, we want something low calorie that doesn’t add weight. Air-popped with tasty seasoning popcorns is among the favorite pantry snacks of many. Popcorns are healthy snacks also as they are high fiber whole grains, they aid in reducing the risk of heart diseases, hypertension or even diabetes. Fiber is essential in our diet, and popcorn is the ideal snack that contributes to its daily content. Popcorn has a low-calorie count; therefore, it helps you avoid any weight gain.
4. Dark Chocolate
We all need to make space for a few chocolate treats in our pantry. Made from the cacao tree’s seed, dark chocolate is loaded with nutrients and antioxidants. It can possibly help you reduce the risk of heart diseases, improve brain functions and affect blood flow: it can improve blood flow and lower blood pressure. Besides these health benefits, it also protects our skin from the Sun and increases skin density and hydration. However, it should not be taken often by children since it contains caffeine, so ensure to eat dark chocolates in a limited quantity.
5. Roasted Chickpeas
When we talk about healthy pantry snacks, we want something that makes us feel full, is healthy and can be stocked in our pantry easily for a month. Nutty in taste in green texture chickpeas are a great source of vitamins, minerals and fibers. It contains a high amount of protein which is excellent for vegetarians. Protein and fiber in chickpeas help curb your hunger and keep your appetite in check. As it is a rich plant protein, it aids weight management and also helps to boost bone health.
6. Rice Cakes
Becoming a staple food for many people, rice cakes are healthy and non-perishable snacks. You can easily find it in many grocery stores near you. Made of unsalted brown rice; rice cakes have plenty of nutritional value. It also helps to regulate the glucose level in your body by maintaining a better diet quality with high fibre content. Last but not least, it is a tasty and healthy pantry snack to hold on to people who started prioritizing over any other snack.
7. Multigrain Chips
People have started prioritizing their health; seeing this, many companies have come up with multigrain chips. However, before buying these chips, you should consider reading the ingredients present in them at the back of the packet. However, if you talk about natural multigrain chips, they have a lot of benefits. It contains high fiber content, Vitamin B and iron. Many people prefer to add toppings and other seasonings to the multigrain chips to add to the taste. But you can also consume it directly as a whole grain content.
8. Protein Bars
Protein is essential for good health and an extremely crucial micronutrient for our body; it impacts our metabolism and governs our appetite as well. And here, protein bars are a perfect healthy snack as it helps to curb hunger hence aiding weight loss. Protein bars are the ideal meal before any workout, and some people prefer it as a pre-workout meal. Eating protein bars provides continuous energy to the body and can act as mid-meal and mid-meal snacks. Moreover, these are easily available in the market, and you can stock them for a longer period.
9. Dried Fruits (No sugar content)
Dry Fruits are often considered superfoods due to their high nutritional value. They not just help to keep the metabolism active but also influences our ageing process. Even a small quantity of dry fruit can guarantee you an abundant source of nutrients. Everyone should stock dry fruits in their pantry of non-perishable snacks. Moreover, if you are a vegetarian, dry fruit should be part of your daily diet, don’t skip buying these healthy pantry snacks next time.
10. Granola
Usually, when people are looking for healthy pantry snacks, granola also hits their minds. It is a mixture of roasted oats, nuts and sugar content. Since chocolate syrups and sugar contain high-fat content, it is advised that you should go for honey or jaggery granola. Moreover, Granola is rich in protein, fibre and Vitamin E. It eventually makes you feel full and improves your blood pressure level.
How to Set up a Snack Shelf in the Pantry?
1. Plan, Proceed, Assign
Setting up your snack shelf is easy if you are clear about what you need to stock up. It will definitely help and make your work easy if you have a designated area for everything in your pantry.
2. Convenient Supplies
You should have a snack shelf with proper containers. Moreover, if you want to be more organized, you can label the containers with each category.
3. Guidelines & Rules
if you have children in your home, then you can put notes. Telling them what to eat and when to eat will make it easy for them to choose between their evening snack and after school snack.
Food deserves to be excellent and contribute to your fullness. Therefore, always make sure that you have a variety of healthy pantry snacks to follow a healthy diet schedule. Do consider the above mentioned healthy non-perishable pantry snacks before stocking up your pantry.
Also Read: Snacks are those tiny servings that can make you feel full. While watching a horror flick or any other exciting movie or game, these little bites of savory snacks can make your evening tastier.
