Our Top 5 Healthy Snacks for Schools

With the constant advertising of junk food, easy access to takeaways and the convenience of buying unhealthy food, it’s no surprise that the UK is in the middle of an obesity crisis. Even when school canteens are selling healthy meals, almost half of schools in the country have access to vending machines which sell chocolate, crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks (Source: Irish Times, 2018). Providing healthy snacks for schools could help.

Children are exposed to unhealthy products on a daily basis but there is an alternative. New brands have entered the market in the last few years and they have a different outlook to traditional snacks. They want to provide healthy, nutritious snacks, yet with all the flavour we enjoy from our usual treats. For school children, this is more important than ever. Over a third are overweight by the time they leave primary school (Bath Echo, 2018) and healthy children stand a much better chance of becoming healthy adults.

Here are our top five healthy snacks for schools.

Dried Fruit:

We are often told to make sure to eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. This is easier said than done when much fruit can’t be eaten without first being prepped and they frequently get banged about in children’s lunch boxes. Urban Fruits have a solution, children get a portion of fruit – with no mess and no bruised snacks! Their solution was to remove all the refined sugar, concentrates and sulphites that were rife in dried fruit, but also make fruit on the move a little more exciting. Because they are gently baked at low temperatures for a long-time almost all the goodness found in fresh fruit is restored. They contain no sugar, no sulphites, no shortcuts. 100% fruit without the mess, peel or prickles, so easier to munch on the move.

Popcorn:

Another alternative to greasy crisps! We sell Portlebay Popcorn, based in Devon. They simply take a natural grain, pop it and flavour it. Their popcorn comes in six different wonderful flavours and is made from 100% natural ingredients. They are also gluten free, so everyone can enjoy them.

Baked Crisps:

Potatoes are usually deep-fried to make greasy crisps. Recently brands have realised that there is alternative way of cooking them. Popchips are heated in a pressurized chamber and the quickly released. This yummy alternative version to crisps is perfect for children and contains half the fat. They are both healthier and lighter, yet they come in a variety of flavours for different tastes. Even for the fussy eaters!

Rice Cakes:

A crunchy snack, Metcalfes Ricecakes mix a healthy ricecake with a little chocolatey or yogurt treat. They are the perfect balance of wholegrain and white rice. Also, they are suitable for vegetarians, are gluten free and they don’t contain any artificial flavours. Metcalfes Ricecakes come in three different flavours, milk chocolate, dark chocolate and yogurt.

Flapjacks:

Graze provide over 100 different snacks, so you can imagine, it was tough to pick out the best ones for our Doozy machines. We sampled a variety of Graze Flapjacks which contain protein ingredients and superfoods. Team Doozy were big fans of the Cocoa and Vanilla Protein Flapjack. Turns out our consumers do too. This handmade, whole rolled oat flapjack contains cocoa, vanilla flavouring and protein crispies. Great for a satisfying sweet boost, and it’s a source of fibre too! It’s always good to have variety, we also have Graze’s lemon drizzle flapjack.

Have a look at our Barton Peveril Case Study to see healthy vending for schools in action