36// Need ideas for kids snacks this summer that aren’t just carbs?
Need ideas for kids snacks this summer that aren’t just carbs?
How to help your family find healthy snacks as a busy mom
Right before our third child was born, I had this random idea to convert the lowest drawer in our fridge to a “snack drawer.” This way, whether it be my parents helping with my older kids over snack time (while I was newly with the baby) or needing to reach for something satisfying myself, we had a kid-friendly snack drawer stocked with nourishing options at any given time.
Since sharing about this on Instagram, I have gotten several questions about this drawer, how it is used (or could be abused!), and more on the logistics about keeping the food fresh.
That’s why in this episode, I am going to help you to create a kid-friendly snack drawer of your own. I will walk you through where this ought to be in your specific fridge, several healthy snack options to put in it, and how to ease your family into using it. After the episode, you will know just how to set your kids and family up with healthy snack habits that don't have them heading straight for the pantry any time you hear those words, "Mom, I'm hungry!"
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] Right before Owen was born, about three, four years ago. I had this random idea to convert the lowest drawer in our fridge to a snack drawer. And my thinking was that this way, whether it be my parents that were helping out as we kind of transitioned in that postpartum window my kids needing a snack when maybe I was feeding Owen or my husband just wanting something that his wife had already approved was okay for the kids to have at snack.
[00:00:25] I wanted something that was a kid friendly snack drawer stocked with the nourishing options that I would hope to give them, but that ultimately. anyone could give them, or as my kids have grown older, they could get themselves. And this concept is something that I've shared numerous times on Instagram.
[00:00:41] It's one of my go-to parts of meal prep each weekend. If I do nothing else for meal prep, the snack drawer gets done, but I've also gotten a lot of questions about the snack drawer. And so I thought with summer being here and us all need. Readily available snacks for our kids, but also wanting to deter our kids from endless snacking and kind of that summer snacking that just turns into grazing all day or asking for a snack 32 times a day.
[00:01:08] I wanna show you how the snack drawer might fit for your family and how it might help solve some of these snack time struggles. As moms we all face, especially in the summertime. So we're gonna dive into how you can create a kid friendly snack drawer and highlight some of the most commonly asked questions and answers about how to effectively use a snack drawer.
[00:01:29] So it helps support your child's nutrition. And your family's feeding goals rather than competing with it.
[00:01:39] Hey mama, I'm Ashley, and welcome to the veggies and virtue podcast. In this podcast, you will find simple menu ideas, kitchen, organizational systems, spelled out for mom life and feeding tips and tricks that are both evidence based and grace lace. I believe that you can find flexibility when it comes to feeding your family so that you can feel calm, capable, and connected in the kitchen.
[00:01:57] As a registered dietician and Christian mom of three myself, I want you to break free from the mealtime battles and to feel equipped while feeding your kids all day long, pull up a stool at my kitchen counter. And let me pour you a cup of coffee and say a quick prayer for you. It's time to chat about the meal times messes moments and ministry of motherhood.
[00:02:18] So first. As we talk about the kid friendly snack drawer. I want you to think about it in the context of a responsive feeding approach and in the context of what is often referred to as the division of responsibility, basically boiling down to what is your role in the feeding relationship and what is your child's role?
[00:02:37] And this is something that I spend a whole phase of my meal times made easy method discussing with families because I know roles and responsibilities. can get really mixed up with families. And during the summertime, when, you know, we may either be working from home or just want to sometimes kind of let our kids go do something for themselves and not need handholding it all the times we can sometimes switch up whose role is who's unintentionally, and we can mix up whose role in the feeding relationship it is to decide what, when and where food is.
[00:03:11] Are. And sometimes we assume, as I've talked about several times, and again, I talk about a lot in my upcoming course meal times made easy. We can oftentimes override our child's role of deciding if weather and how much they eat. So throughout the context of today's episode, I want you to see how creating a kid friendly snack door should support appropriate feeding roles.
[00:03:33] Being the parents' role is what, when and where food is offered. The child's role is to decide if, whether they. And how much they eat. So if at any point you're wondering a question that I haven't yet gotten to come back to that and see how does this align with appropriate feeding roles? Because if it counters it, there either needs to be an age appropriate explanation, such as the child's maybe a little older and it has maybe even given a little bit more autonomy and independence and, you know, we kind of shift some of that responsibility and the role as kids get older and more.
[00:04:06] Or make sure that you're listening in. So you can hear all the FAQs that I address at the end that come in about snack drawers. So first we're gonna talk about where, and I think that this is an important part of I'm gonna go through what went and where first as the parents' roles. Because I think talking about where as a snack drawer is really important, particularly because one of family's biggest pain points tends to be.
[00:04:31] Their kids just want six individually packaged bags of fire booty, or they'll eat a whole sleeve of old fish, or they eat six apple sauce, pouches. And oftentimes these things are all in the pantry. And I would encourage you to today just evaluate if your kid says. I wanna snack what direction they do.
[00:04:52] They go, where do they go? Are they going to the pantry more often than not kids are? And so something I think can be helpful is you can have a designated snack drawer or snack bin. And I know lots of families do in the pantry of kind of those approved snacks that are Options, your kids might choose, but I would also encourage you to help shift their direction towards the refrigerator.
[00:05:14] And you could simply do pick one thing from the snack drawer in the pantry and pick one thing from the snack drawer in the kitchen. So, or excuse me in the refrigerator. So they're at least getting a little bit more variety that way. But for the context of today, I want us to talk about shifting the snack drawer to the refrigerator and for obvious reasons, this allows us to offer different nutritional variety than some of the non-perishable snacks.
[00:05:38] None of those snacks are inherently bad, but what we see and what we'll get into when we talk about what we're offering is sometimes depending on the snack, they may not fuel our child for long enough to help kind of bridge the gap between meals. Which is ultimately one of the goals of a snack. And so when we're looking at where this is, we're gonna talk about in the context of it being in your refrigerator.
[00:06:03] I get asked every single time I post our snack drawer. What kind of fridge we have. I can link it in the show notes, but ultimately it's really not important. I do love this snack drawer and that's why even during our kitchen remodel, we didn't get a new fridge because I just love our fridge. And it's been very functional for our family, but it was a meat and cheese drawer that I just converted into a snack drawer.
[00:06:22] It's the lowest drawer. It expands. We have kind of that French door style. So it spans the entire. bottom of the fridge. But even if you have a side by side or a top and bottom with like the freezer on top, you can find any space that works for your family in your fridge. If you have watched the evolution of our snack drawer, we've used several different bins and containers and, you know, storage things.
[00:06:45] This was not a home edit fridge from the very beginning. This was a figure out proof of concept and what worked functionally for our family, and then find containers that helped support. and so before you go get lost at home goods, looking for all the cute little clear organizational containers first, get a shoebox, get an Amazon box and just start designating a spot where snacks can be located in your fridge.
[00:07:13] You may play around with where this is. It might be replacing a cheese and meat drawer as it was in our fridge. I, it might be utilizing maybe the lower produce bin. and you began consolidating the produce either. What this kind of motivated me to do was we move the meat and cheese up to one of the produce stores.
[00:07:29] It didn't mean that I was buying less produce. What it did mean is that I started prepping more of the produce because then it didn't just get stuck in a drawer. Then I began, you know, making sure the fruits and veggies were washed or designated to a DIY dinner bin. And it kind of reinforced some of these other systems that I talk a lot about in mealtime's made easy method and.
[00:07:50] what I want you to think about is where could you put this, that doesn't disrupt the function and the flow of your fridge, but instead it's a location that your kids could access or that other family members could access. If you were delegating the snack time duties to them, and you could begin to consolidate some of the choices there and you can see tons of my examples under on my Instagram of this snack drawer.
[00:08:13] And I'll link those on the show notes as well, but. Ultimately, this gets us into what, what foods we're putting in that box, that drawer, that designated space. And so again, what goes in that drawer is up to you as the nutritional gatekeeper. That is your role in the feeding relationship to decide what snack foods are offered.
[00:08:33] So you get to pick what goes in there. And I have a long list. Of options. I encourage you to maybe download even my free printable from lunch, packing, cheat sheet. A lot of those options can just be put in a snack drawer. They're not specific to lunch options, they could be options, but you want to think in three broad categories.
[00:08:50] And I'll tell you in a minute, why you wanna think in terms of fat fiber and protein. and we wanna offer a variety of foods that give these nutrition offerings to our kids, because that's gonna help bridge the gap for longer fat fiber and protein are what are going to fuel our kids for longer so that they stay satisfied for longer with a snack.
[00:09:11] Then they would say just an apple sauce, pouch, just some goldfish or just some pirate booty, as I mentioned earlier. So. when you look at the options of what you're putting in this snack box or snack drawer or whatever place in your fridge that you've decided on. Things for fiber would be things like fruit and veggies.
[00:09:29] You may put baby carrots, mini cucumbers, baby bell peppers. You may prep, you know, broccoli, cauliflower. You could, you know, wash grapes or have snack apples in there, or put little clementines in there. Have berries ready to go. Any of those things are gonna offer some fiber, which are going to, again, help keep your kid full for longer.
[00:09:49] Additionally, things that are going to offer, offer fat and or protein. Some of these options offer both fat and protein. So that's kind of a double whammy, but things like yogurt tubes. Or you know, yogurt cups, particularly those with that are either Greek yogurt that have more protein or that are whole milk that are gonna have more fat.
[00:10:08] Those will help fill your kids for longer. Also things like hummus cups or, you know, my kids are really into chocolate hummus, which nutritionally I would rather them just eat regular hummus, but. That helps them get much more excited about carrots and hummus. And so often we have chocolate hummus in the snack drawer.
[00:10:23] You might have guacamole cups or little ranch dip cups. And again, these don't have to be prepackaged ones where you're using single use plastics from the stores they package 'em that way you might buy a big thing of ranch and put it in some little. containers that work for your family, that fit in the space that you have it, that you are, you know, batching little bits of yogurt into, or little bits of ranch into, or things like.
[00:10:47] other options for fat and protein that we often have are things like hard boiled eggs. We might, might make energy bites or you can put things like a LA bar in there, cheese sticks, cheese rounds, any of those kind of things. And then some of the other options that may satisfy fat fiber and or protein would be things like if you make muffins, particularly those from like my previous muffin clubs that are going to use more nourishing ingredients that are going to be a little bit more fuel.
[00:11:12] My girlfriend, Mary Ellen, from milk and honey nutrition. She has some banana avocado breakfast cookies that are a favorite here. We put those in the snack drawer all the time. You might put different kinds of leftover pancakes that could easily just be heated up as a snack. But the other thing I want you to think about here is how can you maybe bring in some of the items that are your kids' favorite from the pantry into the snack drawer, particularly if you know, your child might be a little hesitant to this whole new concept that you're trying.
[00:11:40] bring in some of those snack crackers, bring in some of those snack bars, if your kids really into goldfish or Z bars or apple sauce, pouches or whatever, it might be put them in there. So it helps ease the transition. So as you start encouraging as we went back where this is where we're going to pull our snack from is the snack drawer or the snack box.
[00:12:00] And they see that there are some of those familiar favorites in there that will often. L lessen the amount of pushback from your child saying, but I want blah, blah, blah. That's in the pantry. So most of those foods are fine in the refrigerator. They're just nonperishable and don't require refrigeration.
[00:12:17] But anytime I see my kids kind of gravitating back towards the pantry, I'll just take some of those things that they often want and I'll put them in the snack door so I can continue to redirect them back there. And then I'm again, I'm in charge of what's in the snack door. So if I see what I'm putting in there, You know, needing a refresh or ABO, I will quickly bring in some of those other items when I refill so that we can continue to redirect them.
[00:12:42] The third role I want you to think about as the parent is when, when is the snack drawer? One of the most common questions I get is is this just a free for all now? Because the snack drawer is there. Kids can go get it any time. And there's a lot of nuances to this. I talk with clients about this all the time, because depending on the agent stage of your.
[00:12:59] There may or may not be a little bit more independence and autonomy. When it comes to the snack drawer in our house, we still have set snack times. My kids are eight, six, and three, and I like from a safety perspective and just kind of our routine of the day perspective and making sure that snacks aren't disrupting meals and things like that.
[00:13:16] We still have some guided snack times. And so I will still direct them to win at a snack time. If it is not snack time, the kitchen is. Which would include the snack drawer that does not mean they get to go in there and grab a snack any, and every time if you are struggling with structural routines specifically in the summer, listen back to some of my other episodes that I've done.
[00:13:40] on setting up structure and routine because those episodes will be very helpful for you to kind of figure out how do you even transition your kids from kind of endless grazing to a more consolidated snack time. But with the snack drawer you are in charge of when that is. So you need to let your note, your children know when is the kitchen open?
[00:13:58] When is it closed? And when it is snack time, then you can again work through where are we getting these snacks and where are we eating these snacks? Because so often our kids can just come into the kitchen. Go into the pantry, grab something and go off with it. And they may or may not eat it. We may or may not find that package, you know, spilled or crumbled or left stale with bugs in it later on somewhere else, but from a safety perspective and again, from a routine and a reinforcing.
[00:14:24] healthy feeding behavior perspective. We want to redirect them to where snacks are gonna be had. So the snack drawer can kind of bring them back to the kitchen and keep them in the kitchen. As you work through when, where, and what you are offering them for snack. When we get into if weather and how much a kid eats from the snack drawer, oftentimes families are worried that their kids are just gonna clear out this drawer.
[00:14:48] The second that. You fill it. And honestly, often I will fill it on a Sunday. And by Thursday, that snack door is looking pretty barren. It's not super exciting. It's most of the foods that they would probably prefer not to have, they've already eaten most of their favorites or. You know, the fresh fruits that were already washed and ready.
[00:15:07] And so now we're kind of down to like the snack apples and the things don't that don't perish perish as quickly, but ultimately we can encourage them to choose or to have something that's from fat fiber and protein first and foremost, so that we are reinforcing that they have filling options. And they're not relying on volume alone.
[00:15:25] This is something I've talked about several times before. So to look at some application for this offering options with protein, fat and fiber might include some of these combinations, whether or not your children eat these combinations, or just part of the combination will be a decision on your child.
[00:15:42] So, if you decide what is offered is a combination like carrots and hummus or apples and peanut butter. We often leave Nu butter in the snack drawer as well. I think that's something I forgot to mention. It might be celery, peanut butter and raisin. It might be berries with a yogurt cup. It could be something like tortillas and cheese that you're gonna melt as a quesadilla and offer with guacamole.
[00:16:05] It might be a string cheese with some. It could be an energy bite with south Sumas. It might be some Greek yogurt that you've turned into like a ranch dip and broccoli cauliflower or something like a premade muffin that you offer with an apple slice pouch or a hard boiled egg, and some side of, you know, cucumbers or a veggie.
[00:16:30] Any of those combinations would offer protein, fat, and fiber in a way that would help fuel your. However, as I share those suggestions, some of you may be saying, yeah, well, my kid's not gonna eat that. Well, that's not up to you. You're you get to decide if those are the options that are offered. You have decide what, when and where your child gets to decide if, whether and how much.
[00:16:52] So with those given examples, if you offer apples and a nut butter of choice, and your child doesn't want the nut butter and only eats the apples, they get decide if, whether they're eating either of those elements and how much. From whatever you've said is available of those options. But additionally, when we're talking about if weather and how much, when we have set the guidance of what, when and where it's available, if they choose not to eat that's okay.
[00:17:18] But they also get to then understand the kitchen is closed when snack time is done. So if you choose that this is not an option that you want to eat or that you don't feel hungry, that is your. But know that we will not be eating again until whatever that next meal or eating opportunity is. And so you can let your kids have more, again, we've talked.
[00:17:38] I just did a three part series recently on the concept of more in seconds. So go listen to that. If you know, you wanna know how to handle more in seconds in this snack drawer, the. emphasis with the snack door is not restriction. It's not to limit the amount your kids have. It's just to give them options and to help eliminate some of the mental fog and mental fatigue for moms.
[00:18:00] Every time our kids need a snack. Ugh, what do we go for a snack now? Because that's where we go to these default easy options, like a bag of goldfish crackers, or like the same, you know, Z bar every day. And so having something that weekly rotates, what options are in there using what you have on hand and what items you.
[00:18:17] You know, unpacking from the grocery store continues to offer just some automatic variety and it gives a very clear visual to you, to your spouse, to any babysitters or grandparents or your children, what is available. And then they can choose if, whether and how much they're going to eat from those options when you make them available.
[00:18:38] So when it comes to some of the. Most commonly asked questions. I'm gonna kind of buzz through these really quick, just for the sake of time with this episode. But a lot of people wanna know at what age do you start this? As I mentioned, I started this when I was like almost due with Owen, so pregnant, but expecting his arrival.
[00:18:57] And so trying to come up with survival strategies in advance. And so at that time, my kids would've been two and four. So there was still a lot of shepherding with this snack time. There was not much delegation of snack time responsibilities at that point. And this was much more for my husband or my parents who were coming to visit and help after Owen was born so that they would have options for snack to give them it.
[00:19:21] I knew that I did not wanna be woken up from an app if I was getting to sleep when the baby slept and that rare moment while I had help to do so, I did not want someone to come interrupt me to say, Hey, what should I give the kids for snack? No, that should not be happening. Make it clear what those options are.
[00:19:38] And so if you have all those options in a snack, Whoever the caregiver is knows that's the go-to spot to get them from. But when it comes, what age this works with, it can work really well with young kids who need a lot of guidance and who have a lot of supervision and childcare to help with those snack times.
[00:19:55] However, now, as my kids are older and we've been using this system for a. Nearly four years, I can begin to kind of adjust how we use it, where now I can send my eight year old in and when they need to pick a snack for school, I say, go get a snack outta the snack drawer to pack for school. And they know, or if I do send them there with my six of my eight year old, I say, go pick a snack and they might pick something and I'll say, what do you need for a snack?
[00:20:19] And they know protein, fat fiber. They're still learning what that means and which foods have which things, but they know that they need to. Variety. They need to pick, usually it's one type of produce or something, you know, that we talk about has fiber from it and something else that is usually gonna have fat and or protein.
[00:20:37] And so as kids get older, you can begin to adapt how you do this. If your kids are already older, and this is a very new habit for them, you can face some different challenges, but also some different opportu. When you're establishing a system like this, if your kids are younger, they don't necessarily know any different.
[00:20:55] They may have a very strong opinion in their little toddlerhood, but you can foster this type of approach with a snack drawer very early on. And it just becomes second nature to them as it has with my kids, I work with several families who they have kids who are 6, 8, 11, 13. And they've never used this type of approach.
[00:21:16] And all of a sudden their kids are like, what is mom doing? Now? We have this crazy snack drawer. And so while they may have a little more pushback because it's new and they've had years and years under their belt with things being done differently, you can include them in this process. And this is how the divisional responsibility can shift as our kids get older, but you can begin to include them to say, okay, you can come to the grocery store with me today and help me pick some different things that we're gonna put in the snack drawer, or when you're at home, just start to have them.
[00:21:44] Come kind of help you fill it. And for them to see that this is a partnership, this is something that's meant to support your family. It's not intended to create conflict or division within your family. And so bring your child into the process and invite them to help come up with ideas and to learn about different things in different ways.
[00:22:02] Snack foods make them feel and fuel them up because during the summer is a great time to be equipping some of these older. In how foods fuel them and if it fuels them for a short while or a long while, so that when they go to school and they're needing an after school snack that they throw in their soccer bags so that they, you know, can go from school to soccer practice.
[00:22:23] They know when I just put this little chocolate chip granola bar in there, it doesn't fill me up for long enough until I get home for dinner. But I know if I pack this type of snack, It will fill me for longer. And so summer is a great time to work on some of those concepts with older kids and to begin equipping them in that other questions that I commonly get with snack doors is often in terms of like the perishability.
[00:22:48] As I said, I often will try and refill it the start of the week. And then I just kind of let it go until whenever I grocery shop, I may replenish different things during the week, especially if say I only put half the strawberries in there washed and ready. I might replenish them as needed. Oftentimes we just kind of go with what we have until we go to the grocery store again.
[00:23:08] And of course, you know, if it runs empty, I'm not gonna say, oh, well we have no snacks. I mean, if that's a, a food security issue, then that's one thing. If you truly have limited groceries to put in it, but for most families, you know, you can replenish as needed with what you have on hand, but I would still take it from somewhere else to put it back in this place.
[00:23:29] Otherwise things like keeping things fresh and making sure they don't spoil that is probably an episode in and of itself. But I would say, you know, reinforce the foods that, you know, are more perishable first to be eaten on the first few days that you've filled the snack door. Things like fresh berries or, you know, if you just made guacamole, if you just made so.
[00:23:49] That, you know, might spoil quicker or, you know, you just made muffins or made pancakes where the things that are packaged or something like an apple that has a longer shelf life. Those things are often the things that I push towards the end of the week, because I know that they're not gonna spoil in the first few days if they go uneaten.
[00:24:07] So I hope that this is helpful. I would love to see you doing this. This is one of my favorite things to see you guys share over on Instagram. Show me what you come up with. I don't care if it's a shoebox, you fill of snacks, or if you are feeling extra ambitious and wanna clear out a drawer in your fridge to have as your spot for a snack drawer.
[00:24:26] But I would love to see your guys pictures. So snap a picture and tag me at veggies and virtue. When you do using hashtag VV snack drawer, that's for veggies and virtue snack drawer. And I would love to. How you guys are using this system to set your family up for summer.
[00:24:48] It has been a joy having you on podcast today. And if you've enjoyed it as well, I have a quick favor to ask. Do you mind hopping over to apple podcast and leaving me a written review? This will only take you a hot second. But it truly blesses me every time I get to read one of you right over there. And it allows me to bless others through this podcast and the episodes to come.
[00:25:07] The other thing that you can do is to take a screenshot of this episode and tag me over on Instagram at veggies and virtue, I would love to see what action steps that you're taking from this episode, and also to support your family in the journey moving forward until next time. Thanks for coming over to chat at my kitchen.
[00:25:23] Remember that you'll always have a seat and a snack waiting for you here.
