Your Sweet, Salty, Cheesy, Creamy, Chocolately Fix

At the end of the day, I truly look forward to a sweet tooth fix, particularly if it has chocolate in it. But while trying to lose some weight for summertime, I want to be calorie conscious. With so many 100 calorie packs and snacks out there, how do you know what is a good pick?

Why have you done a good thing?

While fresh fruits, veggies, yogurts are great choices, sometimes you want something a little more special and decadent. Portion controlled snacks that are around 100-150 calories are very important for weight maintenance. Especially during weight loss, it is great to include 1 mid-morning, mid-afternoon and after dinner snack and keep your meal portions small, so you are eating every 4 hours. However, it’s really hard to control yourself sometimes when the bag is just too big or when you are scooping out your own ice cream. Buying portion-controlled snacks is an easy, convenient way of planning your snacks for the day or sweet treat for the night without undoing all your hard work. But not all 100-calorie packs or low cal snacks are created equal. Many of these packs still contain trans fats and other chemicals as they are just miniaturized versions of the real thing.

Here’s a Your Secret Ingredient approved list of snack fixes…sweet, salty, and savory alike. (click here for a printable grocery snack list!!)

The Creamy Side

Breyer’s Smooth and Dreamy Chocolate Covered Strawberry Bars (110 calories)

Ciao Bella Fat Free Blood Orange Sorbet Bars (60 calories)

Ciao Bella Individual Sorbet Cups (100 calories)

Edy’s Whole Fruit Creamy Coconut Bars (120 calories)

SkinnyCow Ice Cream Truffle Pops (110 calories)

SkinnyCow Ice Cream Lowfat Fudge Bars (100 calories)

SkinnyCow Ice cream sandwich (140 calories)

Tofutti Cuties Ice cream sandwich (130 calories)

Trader Joes Mango and Cream bars (60 calories)

Heavenly Chocolate

Emerald’s 100 calorie Cocoa Almonds Packs (100 calories)

Goldfish Crackers 100 calorie Chocolate Grahams pack

Ian’s Organic Cookie Buttons (100 calories)

Hersheys and Reeses 100 calorie snack packs and bars (100 calories)

Kozy Shack Individualized Chocolate Hazelnut Pudding (110 calories)

Pretzel M&Ms Individualized Pack (150 calories)

Sensible Portions Cheating with Chocolate Packs (100 calories)

Smart Food Popcorn Clusters (110 calories)

Trader Joe’s 100 calorie chocolate bars

Trader Joe’s 100 calorie oatmeal chocolate chip cookie packs

Vitalicious VitaTops deep chocolate muffin top (100 calories)

Vitalicious VitaBrownies (100 calories)

Van’s Muffin Crowns (100 calories)

Cheesey Goodness

100 calorie pack of Goldfish cheddar cheese crackers

Babybell cheese (70 calories)

Sargento Light String Cheese (50 calories)

Cabot Serious Snacking 50% Reduced Fat Cheddar (50 calories)

Salty Fix

100 calorie bag of Popchips

100 calorie pack of PopSecret (regular popcorn and kettle corn)

100 calorie pack of Synder’s pretzels

Davids pumpkin seeds mini bag (90 calories)

100 calorie Sun Chip packs

Trader Joes 100 calorie multigrain crackers

Tribe Mini Hummus (100 calories)

Bars on the Go

Kashi TLC Granola Bars (130 calories)

Cascadian Farms Kid’s Sized Oatmeal Raisin Bars (80 calories)

Cliff Kid Sized Z-Bars Chocolate Chip (130 calories)

Gnu Flavor Fiber Cinnamon Raisin Bar (130 calories)

Mini Lara Bars (100 calories)

--Amy Santo, MS RD CDN