Suzannah Oliver, author of Healthy Food for Happy Kids, gives advice on good grazing habits and healthy snacks for peckish offspring

Snack times can be challenging. On the one hand you have a child who obviously needs a top-up, and on the other, you might feel that you would rather your child does not eat something that will interfere with his appetite at the next meal. Faced with a full-on nag it is also easy to give in to pleas for crisps and sweets.

But if you always keep healthy snacks to hand then it really doesn't matter if appetite is a little blunted at meal times because the snack has been nutritious. It is only if the snack is a nutritional disaster area and appetite at meal times is also affected that the whole thing becomes counter-productive.

Be prepared
Have healthy snacks to hand:

• in the car when going on a long journey, so you are not waylaid by the junk in petrol station shops;
• when the children get out of school (this helps reduce the average #6 per child per week spent on the way home from school - that's #365m per year - mainly on crisps, sweets and fizzy drinks).

Healthy snack ideas

• An oatcake on its own or with nut butter
• Half an avocado with a few prawns
• Dried apple rings or raisins with a few nuts (over fives only)
• Rye cracker with cottage cheese or hummus
• Cheese cubes with grapes
• A small packet of corn chips with salsa dip
• A chunk of banana or orange frozen on a stick is refreshing and fun
• A fruit scone or banana muffin
• Vegetable sticks or breadsticks with dips such as hummus, guacamole, mushroom pate, tzatziki or mackerel pate
• Dried or fresh fruit with cottage cheese
• A yoghurt lolly
• A mashed banana piled on some rye toast and sprinkled with cinnamon
• A yoghurt topped with flaked coconut and chopped dried apricots
• Strips of ham wrapped around prunes
• A cup of warming soup (fresh soups are available in cartons, but it's cheaper to make your own!)
• Wholemeal toast fingers with cream cheese and pineapple
• A slice of fruit loaf
• Mini rice cakes and a cheese stick
• Bruchetta - toasted bread (ciabatta is best) brushed with olive oil and garlic and topped with chopped fresh tomato and shredded basil leaf or spread with tapenade (olive or sun-dried tomato paste available from supermarkets)

Substitutions
One way to improve the picture is to make easy substitutions of one snack for another. These are some healthier options that your child probably won't even notice:

Crisps

• Breadsticks (even better with a dip such as avocado, salsa or hummus)
• Twiglets, although fairly high in salt, but no more so than crisps, are lower in fat, plus they are wholemeal and a good source of B-vitamins
• Nuts of all sorts are good sources of polyunsaturated fats, fibre and minerals. Unsalted is best. (Children over five only)
• Oatcakes are moreish and have good fibre levels, which regulate blood sugar
• Japanese rice crackers
• Blue corn chips, available from health food shops and large supermarkets, are better than the average crisp
• Flavoured rice cakes are now widely available and are not as high in fat

Biscuits

• Wholemeal digestive biscuits (delicious with a sliver of cheese)
• Garibaldi biscuits and fig rolls have useful amounts of dried fruit in them

Chocolate
Offer a higher cocoa content chocolate than the types typically available. Green & Black do the best ones in my view, but there are others.

Cake

• Fruit muffins
• Carrot cake
• Oat and raisin flapjacks

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