I get asked a lot about healthy snack ideas, be it for shift workers, school lunch boxes, or for that afternoon pick-me-up when energy levels can drop.

Ideally, we want to be getting sufficient nourishment and energy from our main meals, reducing the need to snack. But that can depend on your activity levels, and the hours between your meals

It’s currently understood that our digestive system benefits from a break in digesting food. We shouldn’t generally need to graze throughout the day. A break helps us regulate our blood sugar levels, we can look to use up excess calories that we may be storing, ie fat burn, and allows our digestive tract time to repair.

If you are flagging and do need to top up, getting our energy from food is ideal – reducing a reliance on sugar and caffeine for energy. Caffeine can help us out of ‘sleep inertia’ perhaps first thing in the morning and during that after lunch lull, but ideally we want our energy to come from sufficient sleep and nutritious fuel.

Sometimes, having a drink helps curb our hunger pangs until the next mealtime. Drinking 1.5-2 litres of fluid is recommended, but not from fizzy drinks, juices or alcohol.

On a night shift it can be helpful, and generally healthier to top up little and often to maintain your energy levels, rather than eat a large, heavy meal. This can sit around for longer and be digested and processed less effectively than during the day, because our digestive system has a rest at night, when it’s dark, and has reduced function. A good main meal before a night shift and a couple of healthy snacks through the night should get most people through. Of course it depends on how much fuel you require for your nocturnal activities!

Savoury snacks will have less impact on your blood sugar. That helps protect your insulin production and will avoid spikes and slumps in your energy levels. The slumps cause cravings and we may feel ‘hangry.’ But also avoid heavily processed savoury snacks, that come packaged, re-shaped, breadcrumbed, deep fried or with lots of added industrial ingredients on the label. Our body can struggle to identify what these commercially produced ingredients are, as opposed to natural food with nutrients that it recognises.

Homemade sweet snacks can contain way less sugar than shop-bought, as you can control the quantities! You can often reduce the amount of sugar in cake and biscuit recipes and not miss the extra sweetness. I know home-baking takes time, but your end result can be more fulfilling and nutritious. It’s also a great life skill to share with our children, helping them build confidence in the kitchen, and experimenting with trying new flavours.

‘Treat’ snacks don’t need to be completely off the menu. They can still be enjoyed occasionally, but shouldn’t be our daily go-to 1,2,3 times per day. That’s where health issues and weight gain can gradually creep in.

So here are some ideas:

• Low sugar flapjack (recipe below)
• Mixed nuts / a trail mix tub with seeds, dried fruit and some dark chocolate drops
• Nut butter on apple slices
• Boiled egg
• Savoury muffins
• Vegetable sticks with hummus (carrot, cucumber, pepper, roasted cauliflower florets)
• Roasted sweet potato fries with sea salt and rosemary
• Pinwheel wraps
• Seasonal fruit pots – eg a mixture of chopped melon, strawberries, grapes, tinned mango slices, plums… a colourful bounty of vitamins, minerals, fibre and polyphenols!
• Full-fat natural yoghurt with some chopped / frozen fruit (you can whiz this up when defrosted to make flavoured yoghurt) and granola on top
• Homemade low-sugar oat cookies or no-cook energy balls
• Smoothies – avoid fruit-only smoothies, which give you a fructose (fruit-sugar) hit. Combine some protein or healthy fats to reduce the energy spike, such as nut butter, full-fat yoghurt, oats, seeds or avocado.

Low sugar chocolate flapjack recipe

Ingredients

• 300g whole oats
• 200g pitted dates or 110g brown sugar
• 250g coconut oil or unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 2 tbsp chopped nuts
• 1 tbsp good-quality honey
• 200g dark (70%) chocolate, broken into squares
• (Start with 50/50 milk and dark chocolate if adjusting to dark)
• 2 handfuls mixed seeds
• (sesame, pumpkin, sunflower, flax/linseed)

Method

Preheat oven to 160ºC and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Blend oats and dates (if using) in a mixer, then add melted butter or coconut oil, the peanut butter, honey and nuts. Mix well.

If using brown sugar, melt this with the butter/coconut oil first, then stir it into the oats.

Smooth onto the baking tray, press down and bake for 30 mins.

Gently melt the chocolate.

Remove the oat mix and pour the chocolate across the top. Sprinkle the mixed seeds across the top.

Allow to cool.

Slice into 16 squares and keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

Refrigerate if the chocolate starts to melt.

Alternative

Ginger Flapjack

Instead of chocolate on the top, add 1 tbsp ginger to the flapjack mix.

Optional – add dark chocolate drops, sultanas, dried cherries or pumpkin seeds to the mix.