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The four-step, no-fail guide to choosing healthy snacks
05-05-2023

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You’re in a rush.

The next meeting starts in 30 minutes. It’s a quick drive away, leaving just enough time to grab a snack. Busy and running on only coffee and a banana, midday hunger is slowly taking hold. 

Your heart sinks realizing you’ve finished everything in your airfare shipment this month—those snacks are just too damn tasty. Thankfully, there’s a Whole Foods along the route, the perfect five-minute stop to grab a bar, and maybe something else. 

As you speed walk through the automatic doors and head for the snack aisle, the mission is clear: pick quickly without sacrificing health. Thankfully, you know the four-step, no-fail guide to choosing the right snack every time.

Step 1: Check added sugar

We maintain our stance that there’s absolutely no need for added sugar of any kind in our diets. That’s why nothing in the airfare marketplace has added sugar, instead using only whole fruit to bring some sweetness. 

While 1 or 2 grams of added sugar certainly won’t kill you, its not helping. More to the point, it signals a snack company willing to use suspect ingredients.

We’re looking for that “0g” smiling back at us under “added sugar.” One favorite snack from outside airfare’s walls available at Whole Foods that avoids added sugar most of the time is MUSH overnight oats. It’s also edible in 27 seconds flat—Justin timed himself.

With sugar checked off, let’s move on. 

Step 2: Scan the ingredients

We can next eliminate a large percentage of unhealthy options simply by glancing at the ingredients. Seeing a stupefyingly-long paragraph of unidentifiable food-like objects (UFOs) means we can safely skip it. We prefer to see short lists of 10 ingredients of fewer, all whole, plant foods and spices. 

A good example is the Thunderbird Carrot Cashew Fig Bar, available at airfare or in Whole Foods. Ingredients: dates, cashews, figs, carrots, nutmeg, vanilla, and Himalayan sea salt. 

Check. 

Step 3: Confirm serving size

Another airfare agreement is that every snack is single-serve, which we maintain for two reasons. 

First, single-serving snacks are easier on the go—duh. Second, and more importantly, smaller package sizes tend to limit the damage, so to speak.

We’ve likely all experienced the feeling of comfort morph quickly into horror once we notice that a 180-calorie macadamia nut snack says, “Servings per container: 3.” 540 calories. Not ideal.

This runaway serving train is frequent with nuts and other calorically dense foods. A simple confirmation of the serving size and total will help avoid this snack-tastrophe.

Step 4: Sign off on the details

Now that we know our snack has no added sugar, contains only real-food ingredients, and has about one serving, let’s confirm the other stats…just in case.

Calories. A good tactic for weight loss and a healthy diet overall is to simply limit calories. When checking the snack label, ensure the total calories in the package—not per serving—fits within your daily plan. Or for nerds like Geremy who track every single calorie that goes into his body, fire up the spreadsheet. 

Saturated fat. As we wrote about in our article on oil, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 10 percent of daily calories. While this is probably more of a concern in animal foods, even whole plant foods like macadamia nuts, coconuts, and peanuts are high in saturated fat, so keep an eye on this line.

Sodium. Like we discussed when one of our all-star customers, Matthew Merrill, asked for a way to sort snacks by sodium content (thanks, Matt), we should all aim to keep sodium intake under 2,000 milligrams per day. We’re not doctors—though Justin sometimes claims to be one when on dates—so consult a physician if dealing with any blood pressure issues. 

Protein. The WHO recommends a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, and more for active folks. Tracking your snack labels will help get you there.

Fiber. Most Americans don’t get even half the fiber they need according to the American Dietetics Association, which we covered in depth here. Again, whole-food, plant-focused snacks can pack a fibrous punch. Getting a few grams with an on-the-go snack is a nice bonus.

There you have it. The four-step, no-fail healthy snack guide wins again. 

Enjoy your picks, drive safe, and crush that meeting.

-Justin, Geremy and the airfare team

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