Review: Real Handful Snacks

Being the mother of a boy I sometimes struggle to fill his hollow legs. He’s hungry, always hungry, but he runs around like a dervish so he burns it off in double quick time. I’ve learnt to always keep a snack on my person for when he gets hungry. He likes dried fruit, so when I was asked to try Real Handful snacks I knew we would enjoy putting them to the test.

Real Handful are little 40g packets of dried fruit with nuts and little bits of chocolate mixed in. They feel like a bit of a naughty treat, but are quite healthy and are just the right size to keep a small boy going until teatime. Each of the 40g packets of Real Handful contains around 160-200 calories per packet and are full of good things such as fibre, protein and good fats, as well as being one of your five (or is it ten) a day!

Review: Real Handful Snacks

There are six kinds Real Handful snacks available –

Blood Orange & Dark Chocolate – blood orange flavoured sultanas, orange flavoured cranberries, dark chocolate and peanuts.
G0-Go-Goji Berries – a blend of nuts, raisins and seeds with goji berries and dark chocolate.
Blueberry Blitz – blueberries, blueberry flavoured raisins, jumbo flame raisins and whole cashews.
Strawberries & Cream – strawberry flavoured raisins, strawberries, cranberries, white chocolate and cashews.
Mixed Berry Crush – blueberry flavoured yoghurt covered raisins, strawberry, cranberries and whole almonds.
Mochacchino – a rich blend of coffee sultanas, cranberries, whole cashew nuts, dark chocolate coffee beans and coffee flavour chocolate drops.

We couldn’t get enough of these Real handful snacks, admittedly my son kindly donated the nuts to me and his dad, but the dried fruit and chocolate were a real hit. I loved the Mochacchino flavour, with its chocolate covered coffee beans. I really enjoyed the mix of fruit and nuts with a smattering of chocolate, these would be great with a mid-afternoon brew to keep me going until teatime, they really are quite filling.

Review: Real Handful Snacks

These are the perfect size to slip into your bag if you’re going out and about, or to keep in your desk drawer for when hunger strikes and are great if you’re wanting to snack a little healthier.

You can buy Real Handful from Holland & Barrett, Ocado, Booths and Boots. Prices start from £1.29. Visit their website for more information.

Review: Real Handful Snacks

I was sent these Real Handful snacks for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Review: ChewyMoon subscription snack box for children

We were sent a ChewyMoon snack box for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

After school the small boy likes to come home to a drink and a little snack. He’s very fond of both fresh and dried fruit, so he normally gets something like that to munch on. An afternoon snack for him is something of a sanity saver for me, if he goes without he’s often so hungry by 5pm he’s howling for his tea. A handful of dried fruit is just enough to tide him over till teatime. This week his afternoon snacks have been courtesy of ChewyMoon, and very nice they are too!

ChewyMoon subscription snack box for children

ChewyMoon is the UK’s first nutritionally-balanced subscription snack box for children between the ages of 4 and 10. Their snacks are made from natural ingredients, with no refined sugar or nasties. There are five snacks in a box, together with a ‘fun pack’ comprising comics, fact cards and totem toys, so the box just as much fun as it is healthy.

In our ChewyMoon box there were five little boxes of snacks – just the right size for a quick nibble. They’re in really fun, brightly coloured boxes (which we’ve saved, I’m sure they’ll be brilliant for using in a craft project). The snacks are all nutritionally balanced and healthy, full of fruit, nuts, seeds and other goodies. He loved eating them and enjoyed trying the different snack boxes.

ChewyMoon subscription snack box for children

The ChewyMoon box comes with some fun things too. Ours contained a card to help us identify different kinds of clouds – we’ve stuck that to the fridge for reference purposes. There was also a space monkey “totem” which you popped out of the card and made into a little stand alone figure and a little comic strip to read.

It’s colourful, fun, a little bit educational, healthy and the box arrives every week through your letterbox, addressed to your child. That alone is beyond exciting for my six year old!

ChewyMoon subscription snack box for children

The ChewyMoon website is fab, it’s got lots of nutritional advice and information for parents. You can also rate each snack, so you can get more of what you like and less of what you don’t.

Your ChewyMoon subscription box is delivered weekly and costs £4.95 per week, you can order a free trial box (just pay postage) to see if you like it. We did like it a lot. I felt that although my son generally enjoys healthy snacks, this was a great way to introduce him to some other kinds of snacks he might enjoy. There were a couple of things in our selection of snacks which challenged him, but with a little encouragement he tried them, enjoyed them and would have them again.

As a parent I try to encourage healthy eating and part of that is discovering new things to eat; exploring flavours and textures and encouraging him to be open to new experiences with food. I think ChewyMoon is a really fun box, but also a way to develop an interest in new things, which is never a bad thing.

For more information about ChewyMoon, visit their website.

Review: Real Handful Snacks

Being the mother of a boy I sometimes struggle to fill his hollow legs. He’s hungry, always hungry, but he runs around like a dervish so he burns it off in double quick time. I’ve learnt to always keep a snack upon my person for when he gets hungry, he likes dried fruit, so when I was asked to try Real Handful I knew my son would enjoy putting them to the test.

Real Handful are little 40g packets of dried fruit with nuts and little bits of chocolate mixed in. They feel like a bit of a naughty treat, but are quite healthy and are just the right size to keep a small boy going until teatime. Each of the 40g packets of Real Handful contains around 160-170 calories per packet and are full of good things such as fibre and good fats, as well as being one of your five (or is it seven) a day!

Real Handful

There are six kinds Real Handful available –

Blood Orange & Dark Chocolate – blood orange flavoured sultanas, orange flavoured cranberries, dark chocolate and peanuts.
G0-Go-Goji Berries – a blend of nuts, raisins and seeds with goji berries and dark chocolate.
Blueberry Blitz – blueberries, blueberry flavoured raisins, jumbo flame raisins and whole cashews.
Strawberries & Cream – strawberry flavoured raisins, strawberries, cranberries, white chocolate and cashews.
Mixed Berry Crush – blueberry flavoured yoghurt covered raisins, strawberry, cranberries and whole almonds.
Mochacchino – a rich blend of coffee sultanas, cranberries, whole cashew nuts, dark chocolate coffee beans and coffee flavour chocolate drops.

Real Handful

The small boy couldn’t get enough of these Real handful snacks, admittedly he kindly donated the nuts to me and his dad, but the dried fruit and chocolate were a real hit. I only managed to try the Mochacchino flavour (the small boy shaped plague of locusts had snaffled the rest) but I really enjoyed the mix of fruit and nuts with a smattering of chocolate, these would be great with a mid-afternoon brew to keep me going until teatime.

These are the perfect size to slip into your bag if you’re going out and about, or to keep in your desk drawer for when hunger strikes and are great if you’re wanting to snack a little healthier.

You can buy Real Handful from Holland & Barrett, Ocado and Harris & Hoole, prices start from £1.29. Visit their website for more information.

I was sent these Real Handful snacks for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Five ways to beat hunger with my Healthy Snacks round-up

We have a hard and fast rule in our house about snacks. Healthy snacks are fine, fruit and rice cakes, that kind of thing. But if you want a biscuit or some crisps you have to put your shoes and coat on and walk to the shop and get it. The thought of making an effort to get a treat is often enough to put us off and turn to something healthier, and if you do put your coat on and go and get your treat, then you’ve earned it, enjoy it.

But try explaining that to a 5 year old. A hungry 5 year old who has to wait a few minutes to be fed is essentially a tornado of rage. The living embodiment of “hangry”.

healthy snacks

Top tip: A hungry (hangry) 5 year old will happily eat carrot sticks and other normally shunned fruit and veg if they are hungry enough. A bag of carrot sticks to munch on the way home from school is a good way to deal with the tornado of rage and the 5 a day problem at the same time.

Having some healthy snacks on hand for when your family need a little something to tide them over is incredibly useful. I’ve picked out some healthy snacks which we enjoy at home.

1. More Cheese Please!

Cheese is in the small boys top 3 favourite foods, we always have a handful of Babybel in the fridge. It’s easy for me to slip a couple in my pocket for him to munch on the way home from school and I don’t mind him snacking on cheese because it’s full of calcium and other good stuff.

2. Fruit Bowl Snacks

We discovered Fruit Bowl about 6 months ago and the boy has been enjoying sprinkling their fruit flakes on his yoghurt ever since. The Fruit Bowl peelers and school bars are great little snacks for nibbling on the way home from school, contain no added sugar and count towards your five a day.

healthy snacks

3. Chocolate!

Yes really. Sometimes you really NEED something sweet and often a couple of small pieces of good dark chocolate is enough to satisfy your craving. Of course my son won’t even contemplate dark chocolate, but having some small individually wrapped pieces of good chocolate, like these from Drop Dead Chocolates is enough to stop you accidentally devouring a 1kg bar of Dairy Milk. Sometimes.

4. Stick the kettle on

Sometimes you can feel hungry but you’re just thirsty. I always give the small boy something to drink and have water freely available to him. If I’m feeling especially hungry I find a nice cuppa can fill the gap for an hour or so, or sometimes I’ll have a glass of juice which I usually add a splash of water to so it is slightly diluted, but that’s a personal preference.

I do enjoy drinking aloe vera juice and I’ve tried for a while now to have a small glass of aloe vera juice on a daily basis. It’s not for everyone in the same way that orange juice with bits in isn’t for everyone, but it’s worth trying if you like the sound of the many health benefits of drinking aloe vera.

healthy snacks

The aloe vera juice from Grace Foods UK contains 50% less sugar than other brands I’ve tried. These handy 500ml bottles (I drink 100ml per day) are available in three flavours, Original, Strawberry and Mango and contain real aloe vera pieces. They are gluten free and suitable for vegetarians, with Original and Mango containing 100% RDA of Vitamin C. It’s available from a wide range of retailers including Tesco and Waitrose. I love aloe vera juice, I think it’s very underrated.

5. Rice Cakes and peanut butter

This may seem very dull indeed, but I always have a packet of Co-op unsalted rice cakes in my cupboard. They’re just 25 calories each and if I’m ravenous and simply cannot wait, or if I’ve no time to make myself something more exciting for lunch, a couple of rice cakes with reduced fat peanut butter are enough to tide me over until tea time. In fact the small boy is also a big fan of this as an after school snack, so we’ll often indulge together. Rice cakes are remarkably filling and contain very few calories. Trust me, I didn’t think I’d like them either.

What are your go to healthy snack choices? I’m always after munchable inspiration!