In this day and age, eating healthy is not so easy. You have to watch what you eat very carefully. Many of the food available for consumption today have very unhealthy contents. Moreover, when people crave for a snack, there aren’t that many healthy snacks available. Most snacks these days are sweet and contain too much calories. Moreover, most snacks these days are made with artificial ingredients, like colorants. These can be harmful to your body in the long run. If you want to stay healthy and live a long life, you have to be careful about what you eat.
However, there are still good and healthy snacks you can munch on when you are hungry. You best options when it comes to small snacks are fruits and vegetables. Fruits like mangoes, apples and strawberries are naturally sweet. Vegetables, on the other hand, can be steamed and made into snacks. However, if you are the type who wants to avoid sweets, you might want to avoid fruits. Fruits are very healthy, but they still have sugar content. Steamed veggies, on the other hand, have very little flavor to them. If you want something not sweet but still flavorful, the best snack for you would be pickles.
Pickles are basically fruits or vegetables that have gone through the process of fermentation. Vinegar and brine are usually used for the fermentation process, although other mediums, such as edible oils, are also used. Cucumbers are the most common food to undergo pickling. It is also the most popular type of pickle. Not if you just look at pictures of pickles, they might not immediately appeal to you. Pickled food look wrinkled and damp, not exactly your stereotypical snack. However, if you are the type who likes a good tongue tease, pickles are great snacks. The taste of pickles is a mix of sour and salty, and amidst being soaked, it still retains its crispness.
Health buffs should definitely go for pickles as regular snacks. You see, amidst being so flavorful, pickles are low in calories. They are also rich in Vitamin K, containing approximately 20% of the Recommended Daily Allowance for this vitamin. However, when snacking on pickles, you should not go overboard. Since brine is used in their fermentation, pickles are also rich in sodium. If you are a bit sensitive to sodium, settle for just one spear daily. One spear contains around 20% of the recommended daily sodium intake. Also remember to wash your snack down with a lot of water to offset the saltiness that enters your system.
When buying pickles, you should make sure to opt for the sour type; not the sweet type. Sweet pickled cucumbers are high are calories because of their sugar content. If you eat these instead of sour pickles, you just might as well eat a cupcake. Of course, since they are more sweet than salty, they contain less sodium than sour pickles. Instead of cucumbers, gherkins are more commonly used for sweet pickling.
Source by Stacy Shue