Healthy snacking is a great strategy to keep your metabolism buzzing and add tons of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to your daily diet. A mid-morning and late afternoon snack will hold hunger at bay and prevent lunchtime and evening pig-outs. Try to include 2 or more food groups per snack, aiming for a mix of fruits, veggies, nuts, beans, whole grains, and lowfat dairy throughout the week.

Portion size is key; if the snack is too large, then guess what? It’s not a snack; it’s a meal.  Two hundred calories for women and 300 for men is a realistic snack size.  The following snacks are around 200 calories and packed with a balance of carbohydrate, protein, and fat to keep you energized throughout the day.

1. Whole wheat English muffin spread with 1 Tablespoon peanut, cashew, or almond butter.
2. 2 dried figs, 1 oz goat cheese, 2 slices of prosciutto
3. 1-2 cups tomato, veggie, or lentil soup
4. Celery sticks spread with 1/4 cup cottage cheese and tart, dried cherries
5. 8 cashews (1/2 oz), 3-4 Hershey kisses
6. 4-6 dried apricots, 12 almonds (1/2 oz)
7. 1 cup edamame pods with a dash of soy sauce
8. 2-3 Tablespoons hummus and raw veggies for dipping. Try carrots, celery, broccolini, radish, grape tomatoes, and snow peas.
9. 1 packet instant oatmeal, 7 walnuts (1/2 oz), 1 tsp honey
10. 1 apple or pear sliced and dipped in lowfat strawberry yogurt
11. 1 packet hot chocolate mix make with 8oz low-fat or non-fat milk
12. 1 small whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 1/2 banana and 2 tsp peanut butter
13. Smoothie made with 1 cup each of frozen peaches and raspberries, 1/2 c fatfree Greek yogurt (try Fage), squirt of lime juice
14. 3 Ryvita dark rye crispbreads topped with 1/4 avocado and cucumber slices
15. 1 small whole wheat pita stuffed with cold, shredded chicken breast, grape halves, and celery, and a squirt each of honey and Dijon mustard

Have some favorite snacks of your own? Share them with MentalKitchen readers!

I was flipping through an issue of Real Simple this evening at the gym and came across a blurb about Good Food Near You, a website that helps you locate healthy menu options at various eating establishments in your immediate vicinity.  I checked it out when I got home and think the site can help you eat smarter when you’re out and about in unfamiliar surroundings and in need of sustenance.

If you’re at work, driving in your car, or traveling for business or pleasure, dining options may be limited, making smart dining decisions difficult.  Enter your zip code, and Good Food Near You lists the lowest calorie item at 25 dining places near your location, including fast food and popular restaurants, and grocery and convenience stores. Select a search result to see the full nutrition information for that menu item, access a map to the location, and view the restaurant’s entire menu content. Search results can be sorted by distance, lowest calories, lowest carbohydrate, or lowest fat.  iPhone and Blackberry apps are available.

Features of Good Food Near You:
- Search for restaurant menu and food options near any U.S. location
- Auto-detect your location to use GPS to search for food near you
- Manually enter your zip code to search for food near you
- Search over 36,000 restaurant menu items
- Search over 250,000 U.S. restaurant locations
- Sort restaurant menus and food by lowest fat, lowest calories or lowest carbohydrates
- Select a menu item to bring up detailed nutritional information including sodium, fiber, protein, sugars and cholesterol
- Map the restaurant to locate good food near you

The concept of the website is great and could be even more useful if independently-owned cafes and restaurants can eventually submit nutritional data for their menu items as well.

If you’re like me, you love all things food.  Cooking it, eating it, and talking about it. Check out this community of over 6,000 Foodie blogs covering every food niche you can fathom. These blogs are chock full of great recipes (simple to gourmet), cooking tips (microwaving to baking), photos, reviews of restaurants, wine, and travel, and so much more!

Trying to eat smarter?  Start with a search of blogs with the popular tags: healthy, nutrition, and (yes!) vegetables.

I hope all of my readers enjoyed the holidays and have kicked 2010 off to a great start!

My favorite Christmas gift: an Apple iPhone.

Thousands of iPhone applications (a.k.a. apps) focus on food, nutrition, and healthy eating habits. There are apps for cooking just about anything, in any fashion; apps for searching nutrient and recipe databases, apps for making grocery lists and budgets; apps for tracking calories, carbohydrate and fat grams; apps for planning meals and weekly menus; apps for finding local farmers markets, choosing sustainable fish, tasting new wines or cheeses; essentially apps for everything food.  The iPhone even has a built-in timer for use in lieu of a kitchen timer.

Since many of these apps can help you eat smarter, and since eating smarter is my great passion, I am excited to tell you that I will be testing some of these apps and reporting my favorites to my readers.

Today, I installed Whole Foods Market Recipes, a fabulous app that let’s you search for recipes by category or specific dietary preference.  Categories include  family friendly, one pot meals, portable, and quick and easy, and special diets offer low fat, sugar conscious, high fiber, gluten-free, and vegetarian fare. Not only is there a comprehensive variety of recipes to choose from, but once you make your selection, the ingredients are automatically added to your shopping list, in the exact amounts called for.  Who hasn’t arrived home after a well-intended trip to the grocer to realize one or another ingredient was forgotten?  No more!

Rank recipes as Favorites, and you have a complete, portable recipe box to refer to when shopping or meal planning, nutritional information included.

Another useful feature, On Hand, lets you enter foods items you already have but don’t necessarily know what to do with.  The app lists recipes using those items, meaning new meal ideas and less food waste. Better bang for your food buck!

Don’t have an iPhone?  You can find the same, great recipes on www.wholefoodsmarket.com.