8 Healthy And Delicious Take-To-Work Snacks

These nutritious treats on crackers are going to annihilate your midday junk food cravings and show NO REMORSE.

Most healthy snacks offer very little textural contrast — they’re either all smushy, like smoothies and oatmeal, or all crunchy, like pretzels and granola bars. Having a little crunch with a little something creamy is more satisfying. I like crispbread crackers (like this) for the task because there is just the right amount of surface area to make things interesting without overdoing it. Their size also gives you a nutritional assist in the moderation department.

There are many brands of crispbread crackers, but one Swedish brand in particular (Wasa) is easy to find and has lots of variety, like sourdough, multi or whole grain, and sesame. All are attractive options as they are low in calories and fat but high in fiber, and they are often recommended by nutritionists as a satisfying, moderate snack. Really, it’s a crunchy, hearty alternative to sandwich bread.

3 TIPS FOR HEALTHY SNACKING AT WORK

1. Keep an arsenal of snack enhancers at work so you are not schlepping stuff back and forth.

• small bottle of good olive oil
• kosher salt
• nice pepper grinder
• honey
• small jar of cinnamon

2. Keep a few tools at work too.

• cutting board
• cheap paring knife

3. Pack smart.

• Pack your crispbread in Tupperware to keep it from cracking. You may even want to wrap it in plastic wrap so other ingredients in your snack pack don’t get moisture on your cracker. Wet crackers are the worst.

1. Apples and Honey with Nut Butter

Pack a whole apple in your bag. Smear peanut, almond, cashew — whatever butter you are into — onto your crispbread. Drape a small sheet of plastic wrap over the nut butter so it doesn’t smear all over, then pack it up. At snack time, thinly slice your apple, and drizzle with honey and cinnamon, which you hopefully have at work. You can substitute the apple for a banana to mix things up.

2. Avocado and Mozzarella

At home, slice your fresh mozzarella and wrap in plastic wrap. Pack your crispbread and a whole avocado to go. When you are ready to eat, slice your avocado. Top the crispbread with the mozzarella, add your sliced avocado, drizzle with olive oil, and season with kosher salt and pepper.

3. Hummus, Carrot, and Cucumber

Before work, use a vegetable peeler to make long strands with your carrot and cucumber and pack in a plastic baggie or container. Pack your crispbread and a container of hummus. When ready, spread your hummus on the crispbread and lay down those carrots and cukes.

4. Egg White Salad

This is a good one to plan the night before. Hard-boil 2 eggs (place in a small pan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, cover with a lid, and let stand for 12 minutes. Drain the water, then place eggs in a bowl of ice water to cool.) Peel the eggs and then, using the whites only, chop them up and put into a small bowl. Add 1 tablespoon Greek yogurt, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill, and a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper. Stir to combine.

Load the egg white salad into a container and pack your crispbread separately. Spoon over crispbread at lunchtime.

5. Dates and Goat Cheese

Cut up some goat cheese and place into a container. Throw in some chopped dates and sliced almonds, separated from the cheese by a plastic baggy. Pack your crispbread to go. Ready to eat? Smear the goat cheese on to your crispbread, top with dates and almonds, and drizzle with honey from your stash.

6. Tomato and Feta

Slice some tomatoes and place them in your container, then cover with plastic wrap. Crumble some feta into a pile in your container and sprinkle with dried oregano or Italian herbs. Pack your crispbread separately. When you get hungry, top your crispbread with tomato, feta and herbs, and drizzle with your stashed olive oil and freshly ground pepper.

7. Pineapple and Chipotle

At home, slice your pineapple (or you can use canned slices in juice), and scoop out ¼ cup cottage cheese. Place both in a container and sprinkle with a pinch of chipotle powder. Pack up your crispbread separately. Don’t assemble this one until you are ready to eat or you’ll have a sad, wet cracker. :(

8. Strawberries and Spice

At home, slice up some fresh strawberries and place in a plastic container. Spread a tablespoon of cream cheese on your crispbread and sprinkle with nutmeg, cinnamon, or vanilla salt. Wrap it in plastic wrap and pack in the container. When the time is right, layer the strawberries over the crispbread.

[via Buzzfeed]

The True Costs of 'Cheap' Food

Ellen Gustafson for The Huffington Post:

If I had a dollar for every time someone said that they don't buy fruits and vegetables or "healthy food" because it's too expensive, I could feed a small town all organic food for years! But, of course, it's true -- when you look at the prices of so-called "conventional" junk food compared with local, organic fruits and veggies, on a calorie per dollar basis, the junk often wins. Many people assume that it's the produce or organic foods that "cost more" than highly processed, shelf-stable ubiquitous and cheap junk food, but what if the price tags that we see don't tell the whole story?

Take the very American, $1 hamburger, for example. To produce a fast food burger you need to start with growing corn -- which requires acres of corn fields, seeds, gallons of water, gas for heavy machinery, pounds of fertilizer and sprays of pesticides, and government subsidies. Then you need to fatten cows as quickly as possible, potentially give them antibiotics, deal with their waste, transport them to slaughter, power the slaughter facility, refrigerate the ground meat and then cook it! Not to mention all the costs associated with the processed wheat bun and condiments. Are economies of scale really so efficient that all of those costs amortize over tons of ground beef and fixings to make a really cheap burger, or are there parts of that whole list of "costs" that don't actually show up in the price of our fast food burgers?

There is momentum developing around answers to this question -- that the true costs of cheap food are currently hidden and making high-impact (often junk) food seem cheaper than it should be. Examples of costs not currently factored into our food supply include the environmental outcomes of chemically-intensive and petroleum-intensive agriculture, costs for soil erosion, real water and irrigation costs, pesticide and waste runoff that creates dead zones in our waterways (like the "New Jersey-sized dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico" that stems from nitrogen runoff from our Corn Belt) and then affects the livelihoods of fishermen and shrimp farmers in the Gulf region.

Hidden health costs like our global obesity epidemic and the food-related public health issues of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are certainly not included in the cost of your fast food meal. Not to mention unpaid externalities like low wages for food workers that often mean government subsidies like food assistance, which is what over 50 percent of fast food worker families are getting -- a study showed that fast food workers are getting $7 billion taxpayer dollars, which provides a huge, additional subsidy to fast food companies (on top of the corn and soy subsidies that allow them to buy cheap ingredients with government help.) Just this week, the Environmental Working Group released an analysis that showed correlation between areas where farmers have been enjoying rising farm subsidies and growing poverty, and a Walmart in Ohio is holding a food drive in its store... for its own employees!

The truth is that the "value" and "low prices" of cheap food that we see at the cash register, are not the whole story. We are paying today in our health and our taxes and our children will be paying tomorrow with a degraded environment, dirty water, decimated communities and jobs, and denigrated health.

So, what's the solution? A growing movement of farmers and scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs are gathering around the idea that we need true cost accounting in our food supply to help consumers make choices that include the real costs of the way food is grown and how it affects our health. Farmers and food producers should be rewarded for stewardship of our environment, producing nutrient-dense foods, providing decent jobs and improving their local economies. And food systems that pollute our water, destroy biodiversity, exploit workers, and produce high-calorie, low-nutrient foods that become junk food (or fuel) should be accountable for the true outcomes of their production systems.

On December 6th in London, the UK's Sustainable Food Trust is hosting a public conference on exactly this issue -- True-Cost Accounting in Food and Farming. I'll be there on behalf of Food Tank, which will be continuing to cover stories about the true costs of our consumption around the world. It's time to really put our money where our mouth SHOULD be -- eating foods that are healthy for us, our families, our communities, and the planet.

[via Food For Thought]