Over the past week I’ve had so many friends come to me asking for advice on how to transition their family to gluten-free/dairy-free or how to avoid food dyes this year at lunch or even curious about the affects of seed oils. Because the hustle of making school lunches is right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to share some of our favorite healthier snack brands.

My advice to anyone looking to clean up their diet (and their kid’s diet) is to take baby steps. You’ll want to take baby steps because A) it can be extremely overwhelming and B) you don’t want to shock your kids and have them resent you for these food related changes you will be making. If you slowly make the transition to healthier snacks, your kids will be more receptive to the idea and may not even notice it to be honest. The easiest way to start is to start swapping out products you run out of. There is no need to toss everything at once and completely start over. When you run out of cereal, grab a healthier brand the next time you are out. If there are certain snacks you’d like to try that your kids have never had before, pick up 1-2 at a time to see what they like. You could even ask a friend or a neighbor to spilt snacks so your families can sample new items without excessive waste if they end up not liking them.

When making healthier lunches for your kids, it’s super important that your kids don’t feel singled out at the lunch table. They don’t want to be the “weird” kid with the healthy lunch when all their friends are getting the “fun” school hot lunches. The easiest way to do this is to make their lunch a bit more fun than you typically would. Add fun notes, cut their sandwich into shapes, add candy eyeballs to a muffin. It may require a little more effort on your part but I can tell you kids are more likely to eat a muffin that has candy eyes on it than not. It’s entertaining for them. You can read more about my go to lunch items here.

The brands I have rounded up are healthier alternatives. Some of them are not perfect, by any means, but they are a hell of a lot better than most of the trash that’s being offered to our kids. I try to live in a state of understanding the implications of what I eat on my health but not letting fear drive every food related choice I make for myself or my kids. It will be OK if they are exposed to a little seed oils here and there. What’s important is that you do the research on HOW certain ingredients affect our bodies and using that to make food related choices. I’m all for the cleanest of eating but when you become fearful of all of the ingredients, that can actually do more harm than good on your body as well. In our house we have zero tolerance for food dyes. That is where I draw the line. But the rest, I do the best that I can when I can and that’s enough.

It is also important to teach your kids WHY you are making healthier swaps. My 9 year old now reads food labels and is repulsed by the ingredients in food. We have taught her how certain ingredients feed her brain and body and others slow her down. She has learned how she feels on the “bad” ingredients and now wants to make healthier choices on her own.

You never want your kids to feel restricted either, because the second they feel that, there will be a purge coming. We have family routines that we stick to that make them feel like they are normal kids. (Healthy) pizza on Friday nights followed up with (healthier) candy and a movie. We often provide a little (healthy) chocolate in their lunches - we love the Hu brand. Good Pops popsicles on a hot day. It’s little things like this that keep them feeling like they are doing what all their friends are doing.

Ok final thing, birthday treats at school. Man, I so wish they would encourage parents to not do this anymore. When Axe was in pre-K it felt like every day there was a damn cupcake that he would eat right before school pickup, it drove me insane. We have since all gone gluten-free so I now have more control over this. I bring cookies or some sort of sweet treat to the kid’s teacher and let them know when there is a birthday that they are to only eat the snacks I have provided. I also tell them my kids are not to eat food dyes. The teachers are great and will give me a heads up if there is an occasion that is coming up in which the kids will be eating some sort of treat or snack just in case I need to bring in something different. Honestly, even if your kid isn’t gluten-free I would recommend doing this. Especially if you have a kid that is highly reactive to sugar and food dyes.

If you have any food-related questions drop me a line, pop over to my DMs in Instagram or text me if we are friends IRL : ) Happy to help!