Natural Diet: Nutrient Dense Snacks

One of the biggest issues people who are converting to a natural diet have is with snacking. We get so used to not getting enough vitamins, minerals, and even sources of water other than drinking water that humans are adapted to seek, that snacking is a hard habit to break. For the first year, you will have to deal with the issue of appetite adaptation. Starting out, you will still have a high appetite until your brain, hormones, and liver understand that you are now going to be consistently fed properly.

Then there's the issue of cravings. Until you went natural, you would often crave things based on what was available before. This is where many people fall back into bad habits because they don't yet know what it is that they really want. So on this page, I'm not only going to tell you about healthy snacks, but which ones you are really craving, when you think you want something else.

 Most packaged and heavily marketed snacks are made to hit two cravings: sugar and salt.  What you must understand is that these aren't always what they seem.  For clues about what your body might really be asking for, you must look at the oldest food traditions.  What did people eat before there were pre packaged cookies, crisps, and candy bars?

A craving for sugars is a craving for carbohydrates.  Your body is asking for quickly accessible energy.  However, you must take into account that it's not just the carbs your body wants.  It's the vitamins associated with carbohydrate rich foods.  Remember, pure sucrose or fructose does not exist in nature.  So what you want is the sugars and vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, or others.

Likewise with a craving for salt, it's not usually just salt that you're really after.  Salt that comes from the earth or the sea naturally has many minerals in it other than sodium.  Your body wants those minerals when you want salty food.  Sometimes though, what you really want isn't salt, but organic acids.

Another twist: sometimes what you want is the good bacteria that creates some organic acids in the process of lactofermentation.  So a craving for something salty could well be a craving for lactobacilus.

 Potato chips and other fried chips are often full of refined salt and hydrogenated or super heated oils.  It's basically just gunk that sits in your liver literally for days and messes up the chemistry of your blood for no good reason.  You will get much more usable nutrition by roasting your own nuts.

Take three cups of raw peanuts, and mix it with a teaspoon of olive oil, and a teaspoon of crushed gray salt.  Make a packet out of aluminum foil for them, and cut a couple of venting holes in the top of the packet.  Bake them in the toaster oven on medium heat (about 175 degrees Celsius) for half an hour.  Open the packet to let them cool.  There you'll have something to grab for the next couple of days.

Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (often really squash seeds) can be dry roasted in a frying pan.  Just put them in the pan on high heat, and shake the pan around until they're nicely browned.  Let them cool before eating them.  For sunflower seeds, no salt is really needed.  See? It's simple and nutritious.

 When you want something sweet, fresh fruit is a given.  When you want a bit of a change, or your favorite fruits are out of season though, try the dried version.  Just make sure to get the kind that are just dehydrated with no added sugar or preservatives.

For a nice tropical tasting snack, break or chop up a half cup of dried pineapple, apricots, and bananas, and mix them with some plain yogurt.  Let it set in the refrigerator for an hour or more.  This is something you can make ahead the night before, and have it for breakfast too. 

 Always keep some vegetables chopped and ready for snacking.  I recommend getting a mandolin style vegetable slicer, so you'll have nicely julienned carrots, kohlrabi, or whatever you like ready in the fridge.

A really nice treat is a salad of carrots and raisins.

Slice some cucumbers and onions, and sprinkle this with a bit of vinegar, and keep that in the refrigerator for a kind of fresh pickles snack.

 Fine cheeses are one of the best snacks there is.  When you go natural, you should become very picky about your cheese because many so-called cheeses are very unnatural.  You want to get cheese that is made of only fermented milk or milk with organic acids and spices or herbs, and nothing else.

You should also consider making your own cheese.

 <<< Back to Natural Diet: Cooking for Weight Loss

<< Essential Recipes for the Natural Diet