Healthy Snacks

As you know, it is not easy to find something that is a healthy snack to feed the sweet tooth or give you an energy boost until meal time. Bananas and apples fit some occasions but they do squash or bruise and can be more bulky than circumstances permit.

Most food bars could not be considered healthy. Many bars are laden with cane sugar, or even worse, artificial sugar substitutes. I had a look at the ingredients on the labels of some health bars and was staggared to see how much so many of the ingredients were heavily processed and refined.

Why are my food bars, biscuits, cake and slices different?

• I use no cane sugar in any of my snacks
• I add absolutely no gum, gelatine, fillers or preservatives
• I disclose every ingredient in each snack
• I use palm sugar, honey, yacon and agave syrup as natural sweeteners
• I use honey and agave syrup as natural preservatives
• There are only a handful of my ingredients that are anything other than a single, raw food

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Health Catastrophe

My suspicion is that the human body is as close to the optimum refining plant we will get, we just need to input the optimum raw materials to enable it to do the best job. You always put petrol in a petrol engine and diesel in a diesel engine. If you put petrol in a deisel engine or deisel in a petrol engine you have a catastrophe on your hands.

With our diet and bodies we are currently putting the equivalent of diesel in a petrol engine. And we have a health catastrophe on our hands, or should I say we have a health catastrophe on our bellies and butts! The companies who make and market food have us inputting all varieties of sugar and unhealthy sugar substitutes, artificial colourings, flavourings and preservatives instead of more healthy fuel.

We certainly do not get the optimum raw materials to run the human body engine from the supermarket. You only need to look at the disturbing trend in obesity levels to arrive at that conclusion.

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Proof is in the Pudding

• 21% of Australian adults are obese (BMI 30+).
• 66% of Australians are overweight.
• Australian women’s waists grew by 5.7 cm, to an average of 82 cm, from 1989 to 2000. Over the same period, men’s waists increased by 4.6 cm to an average of 94.6 cm.
• 25% of women have 88+ cm waists, putting them at serious risk of obesity related diseases.
• 70% of GP consultations relate to chronic diseases linked to obesity.
• Of Australian children aged 6 to 18:
  6.4% were obese in 2006, up from 5.1% in 2000.
  20% had eaten no fruit or vegetables in the two days before the study.
  About 10% drink no milk.

• Only 25% of Australians meet national physical activity guidelines.
• 95% of Australians are not meeting physical activity and nutrition guidelines.
• 47% of adult Australians are not sufficiently active to maintain good health.
• The economic burden of physical inactivity among Australian adults is $2 billion per annum.

Sources:

• * University of Sydney Research
• * OECD Report 2007
• * Australian Society for the Study of Obesity Report
• * Australian General Practice Network
• * Australian National Health Survey 2004/5
• * Sport Medicine Australia 2007 Research
• * University of Sydney Report, 2007

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I am really interested to get your feedback after you try my healthy snacks. I would like to know what was your motivating reason for trying them, whether eating them acheived what you wanted and what you noticed different from eating a healthy snack rather than what you had available prior to now.

If you have allergies, food intolerances or dietary preferances, click here for an handy reference guide as to which of my products contain what ingredients. To download a pdf of it, click here.

And like all my products, what I leave out is as important as what I put in:

No artificial colours		No artificial flavours		No artificial fragrances
No cane sugar		No excitotoxins		No flavour enhancers
No detectable gluten		No added preservatives		No trans-fats