After-school-snacksRaise your hand if you loved snack time when you were a kid. Okay, everyone put their hands down. Who doesn’t look forward to a great snack? At SmartLifeBites.com, our editors certainly do! Here are some of our favorite after school snacks in the marketplace that we think your entire family will enjoy!

For Parents:

Plant-Based Protein Bars

These sweet, slightly crunchy Vega Protein+ Snack Bars are great when you need a snack that will power up your afternoon and give you energy to make it to your evening workout class. Vega’s bars are made with real, plant-based food ingredients, non-GMO Project verified, gluten-free, and certified vegan. With flavors like Chocolate Peanut Butter and Chocolate Caramel flavors, you’ve never tasted plant protein like this before!

Grown-Up Cheese Sticks

Sure, we still love our mozzarella string cheese snacks, but these grown-up Montchevre Goat Milk Cheddar Sticks have a smooth and creamy texture and are very light with a mild goat milk tang. They’re a great alternative to cow’s milk cheddar with fewer calories and less fat. We also like the zesty flavor of Sargento cheese bite snacks.  They’re less than 20 calories per stick and are available in four bold flavors:  Savory Garlic and Herb Jack, Wisconsin Sharp Cheddar, Colby-Pepper Jack and Chipotle BBQ Cheddar.

For Kids and Adults Alike:

Seaweed Snacks

Your kids will love the crispy sheets of seaweed snacks, and parents will love that their kids are getting tons of vitamins A and C in their snacks. We like Annie Chun’s Seaweed Crisps and Organic Seaweed Snacks for any time of day, and their brown sugar and sea salt flavor are a great way to introduce your family into seaweed snacking.

Jerky

The New Primal just launched their first-ever Paleo-friendly kids jerky snack, called Snack Mates, in four new stick flavors and marinade! Kids will love nibbling these sticks at snack time. Parents will love that the products are gluten free, Non-GMO, hormone and antibiotic-free, soy free, Paleo-friendly, and made from free-range turkey and 100% grass-fed.

See Easy Meals for Back to School!

Fruit Sauces

DOLE Mixations are surprising combinations of smooth fruit sauces and juicy chunks of real fruit featuring non-GMO* fruit, no high fructose corn syrup and no artificial flavors. They’re a sweet, spoonable treat that contains vitamin C and is naturally gluten free. Flavors include: Pineapple Mango, Pineapple Peach Apple, Apple Strawberry and Apple Raspberry.

Portable Peanut Butter Packs

Parents and kids go nuts for Crazy Richards Peanut Butter. They’re a family-based business that produces clean food, and have single servings of their nut butters that your kids can squeeze onto crackers or fruit slices.

Healthy Crackers

What better to spread your “Crazy Richards” peanut butter on than Mary’s Gone Crackers? (What a nutty combo!) Their new super seed crackers are packed with nutrients, are available in five flavors, and—as always—are organic, non GMO, vegan, whole grain, and kosher.

Check out these Gluten-Free Snacks for Kids.

Stay Hydrated

Wash down all of your delicious snacks with Ounce Water. This delicious-tasting water comes from the Catskill Mountains and helps you keep track of the amount of water you’ve drank for the day to get the daily recommended amount of 80 ounces.

Crispy Apples

On their own or topping yogurt, oatmeal, or your other favorite snacks, we’d be remiss to not include our favorite crunchy fruit snack, Crispy Apples! The freeze-dried apples are all natural. On the back of the package you won’t find any additives, preservatives, or the names of any ingredients you don’t recognize. On the ingredient list you’ll just find one thing: apples. Individual packs help you keep portions in check while working towards your fruit and veggies servings for the day.

– By Diana Kelly

Smart Lifebites