Snack Ideas???

[hartpukas]

Hello - my daughter is 13 months (diagnosed at 11 months) and I am having the toughest time coming up with "snacks" for her when her levels are high. I want to try and hold off on giving her peanut butter until she is able to clearly talk and relate any symptoms of a possible allergic reaction. Right now, we are always giving cheese snacks but would love to try and mix up her tastes a bit. Thank you for your suggestions. ~ Heidi

[BrendaK]

Since my 5 year old has gotten very tired of peanuts, we are using popcorn for a snack for high blood sugars at school. I think 1 cup of popcorn is around 2-3 grams carbs. He also likes sugar free popsicles, sugar-free jello, and a piece of ham wrapped around a cheese stick. There are also low-carb yogurts available that have only a couple of carbs for a serving. Good luck -- my son was on shots at that age and I remember snacks were very hard when blood sugars were high. Even when they were normal, I hated giving an extra shot for snacks!

[cydnimom]

Wow, snacks are hard at that age because of choking hazards as well diet introductions. Proteins are usually good and so are veggies. You could try celery sticks (but take off the strings), try cucumber chunks, guacamole dip, if you've introduced eggs then a hard boiled egg cut up, slightly steamed brocolli, cauliflower, asparagus, green or yellow beans, even carrots in small quantities are not really high carbed. You could prepare a bunch of these slightly steamed veggies at once and put them in small containers in the freezer and just taken them out when needed. A little zap in the microwave and away you go. If she likes dip - guacomole dip or even a little ranch dressing is okay - they are both low carbed.

[hartpukas]

Wow! Thank you for the ideas. It is a bit difficult since she is so young with the snacks. I went to the library this afternoon and checked out some great diabetic eating/ cookbooks - I hope to find additional ideas in them. ~ Heidi:)

[mischloss]

CarbCountdown Milk = 3 carbs for 8 oz. My son says it tastes better than regular milk!

Rice cakes = Buttered Popcorn flavor is my son's favorite, only 8 carbs for a large one. You daughter could naw on it and it would keep her busy for a while. :)

[GAmom]

she may be a bit young for this for now, but 3 small whole dill pickles are only 1g (snack'umms size). my toddler loved them, I would stick a pickle on a corn-on-the-cob-holder, and he munched on them like a popsicle.
-Rolled up thick sliced of deli turkey w/cream cheese (ranch or garden vegetable flavored), or spread a little ranch dressing on it before you roll it up
-1/2 c. cottage cheese is 5g
-cubes of chicken or steak(freeze a leftover for this)who wouln't love steak?, or grilled chicken strips w/small amount of ranch dip

bless you! it's hard when they are little.

[Abby-Dabby-Doo]

If you're wanting bulk for low carb that's tough with choking hazards...
popcorn
nuts
fresh fruit (do you have the Salter Scale to weigh it? You can get a lot of 3 or 4 carbs)
sugar free jello (with a dab of cool whip)
yogurt (3 carb's single serving)
carrot sticks
green beans

[moco89]

Here's a huge list of free foods.

http://www.mendosa.com/freefoods.htm

[Sarah Maddie's Mom]

She might like a bit of cottage cheese sprinkled with Splenda and cinnamon, Maddie used to love this on toast and run under the broiler to make it bubbly and warm, but you could just skip the toast and heating part.

[Barbzzz]

Hi, I'm not able to help with the snack ideas either (I'm kind of new at this, too), but did want to say that I think it's a good idea that you're holding off on the peanut butter. I've got two kids allergic to it, and Sean was about that age when we first discovered the allergy.

I gave him a tiny bit of peanut butter on bread, and all he did was play with it for a few minutes, and get some smeared on his hands and face. Within moments, he had hives up into his hairline. I washed him down as fast as possible and scheduled an appointment with the allergist. Sure enough, allergic to peanuts. He's 13 now, and we've had a couple of other "minor" incidents where he's been exposed. Once when he was about 4, a worker in the house was eating "groundnuts" (the Ghanaian name for peanuts) and Sean knew he couldn't eat peanuts, but "granite" (as he heard it) sounded fine. He ate a few, came in, told me his tongue felt weird and proceeded to vomit all over the place. Benadryl to the rescue, in that case. Fortunately, though we have them handy, he's never needed an epipen, and I pray he doesn't ever either.

My D daughter is peanut allergic also, but I diagnosed that, not the doctor. She grabbed one of my peanuts (I'm a sucker for them) and "tasted" it, and then proceeded to develop hives on her chin.

I'm sure you'll find some excellent help here (except for me ;-) and be able to give your DD all the nourishment she needs. Good luck.

[twodoor2]

There's some great recipies in the low-carb thread in the nutrition part of the forum. One of the CWD members uses flaxmeal and almondmeal in place of flour for treats like muffins, and liquid stevia or splenda (I personally prefer stevia). I'm thinking of getting some of that to try because I have the same problem when she's high and she wants a snack. A carrot stick kind of gets boring after a while.:p

I also recently obtained some Mrs. May's nut crunch snacks, and they're delicious and gluten free as well. It's a nice alternative to peanut butter, and the pure nuts ones are about 9 carbs for six pieces, so I can give her three pieces, and it's about 4 carbs. They were selling them at the Costco near my home and I think they're in most grocery stores and they're delicious.

http://www.mrsmays.com/

I have to be so careful with snacks, because 1 gram of carb will raise her BG 8mg/dl points, so nothing is free unless I overbolus at the prior meal or she's exercising at the time.

[owensmom]

Berries - raspberries, blueberries, strawberries are all quite low carb for the amount that a 13 month old consumes. Watermelon always works well too.

[Aidan'sMom]

Some good snack ideas above!! I just wanted to add that there is this stuff called puff corn, tastes like pop corn, but without all the hard kernels there is butter flavored and cheese flavored!! Puff corn kind of has the consistency of cheese puffs, dissolves in your mouth kind of thing. Aidan loves it. I just threw the bag away yesterday, but I believe that it is 13 carb per 90 pieces. Aidan usually eats about 10 pieces which equals about 1.4 carbs!! Also, it is low fat and low calorie!! And baked!!

[AlisonKS]

really gross, but he loved them-pork rinds. Also sugar free jello was a favorite (he was 20 months old at dx and didn't have all his teeth).
For fruit I'd take the skin off of grapes and cut in quarters, and melons are easy to dissolve. Good luck!

[Lisa P.]

Our big discovery was olives. Have to be careful once they start eating them in huge numbers, eventually the carbs add up, but a big olive is about 1/3 carb and because it's so fatty it's filling.
Of course we do cheese (watch out, some actually has carbs!) and lunch meat (read the label, some have a lot of dextrose), have started using the non-nitrite kind. We were told fresh veggies but besides the choking hazard issue some veggies have a lot of carbs -- e.g. carrots have more sugar per serving than raspberries, and sweet peas are loaded -- I'm thinking since these are high fiber foods it plays into the carb counts, but since 5 carbs makes a big difference for her (she's little too) we go for as close to zero as we can. Good luck.

[twodoor2]

I just wanted to mention that Almonds are high in fiber (with skin) and omega-3 and very low in carbs :D Almond butter is a delicious alternative to peanut butter.

[Mom2Will]

We found sugar free Hunts pudding. Will's favorite is chocolate at 8 gramsw per cup

[CButler]

I don't think scrambled eggs were mentioned.

[Momof4gr8kids]

I just wanted to point out the date on the start of this thread...

It's from 2005.....

I thought that was odd, the author is a long standing member..... this was shortly after dx.

[Aidan'sMom]

I just wanted to point out the date on the start of this thread...

It's from 2005.....

I thought that was odd, the author is a long standing member..... this was shortly after dx.

I am sure we have been a great help then seeing as that 13 month old is like 3 or 4 now........LOL!! How do threads from 2005 get put back on???

[Momof4gr8kids]

I am sure we have been a great help then seeing as that 13 month old is like 3 or 4 now........LOL!! How do threads from 2005 get put back on???
LoL.
Someone probably was searching the forums, and stumbled on it.
Jeff was talking about finding a way of distinguishing threads that were older.