When planning healthy snacks and light meals it's best to combine foods from different food groups to improve the nutritional balance of the meal - for example, milk and breakfast cereal or a cheese and salad sandwich.
In general, foods can be divided into four main food groups as shown below.
Bread, Cereals and Potatoes
- Bread: wholemeal and granary bread, "high-fibre" white bread, pitta bread, French bread, bagels.
- Crispbreads, crackers, oatcakes.
- Naan bread, chapattis.
- Wholemeal plain muffins.
- Breakfast cereals: preferably wholegrain rather than sugar, honey or chocolate-coated varieties. Go for healthy choices such as Bran Flakes, Shredded Wheat, Weetabix, muesli or porridge.
- Rice: cold rice can be mixed with vegetables, pulses, nuts etc. and plain fromage frais or yogurt to make a salad.
- Pasta: cold pasta is a great salad base.
- Potatoes: including sweet potatoes, yam, cassava and green banana.
Fruit and Vegetables
- All vegetables: whole, chopped, grated, in salads, as sandwich fillings or on their own.
- Fresh fruit: raw or stewed - but without sugar.
- Canned fruit in natural juice.
Milk and Dairy Foods
- Milk: whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed.
- Hard cheese: eg. Cheddar, Red Leicester etc. grated, sliced, in cubes or fingers.
- Cottage cheese: plain, with pineapple, with prawns or chives.
- Cheese spread or curd cheese.
- Yogurt - plain and fruit-flavoured.
- Fromage frais: plain and fruit-flavoured.
- Quark.
Meat, Fish and Alternatives
- Poultry: chicken breast or legs, turkey.
- Lean meat: slices of lamb, beef, pork, ham or lean grilled bacon.
- Liver sausage, pate, meat paste.
- Sausage (including low-fat sausages) grilled.
- Canned fish: tuna, pilchards, sardines, mackerel.
- Fish paste or pate.
- Eggs: hard-boiled, poached, scrambled or as an omelette.
- Beans and lentils, hummus (chickpea spread), baked beans, tofu.
- Nuts, including peanut butter.
- Seeds: pumpkin, sunflower or sesame seeds are all delicious in salads as well as eaten on their own, tahini (sesame seed spread).
