My 5 Favourite Vegan Snacks | EASY, CHEAP, TASTY!

Alright, what's up everyone? Thanks for joining me back here in my kitchen for another video. My name is Derek from Simant Nutrition and today I'm excited to share with you guys my five favorite vegan snacks. So I often get messages from you guys asking me what I have for snacks. You're like, Derek, I've got breakfast dialed, lunch and dinner all figured out, but I just don't know what to have in the middle of the day and in between meals to keep myself satiated and away from the junk food and the processed food and all that. So today I'm going to be sharing with you five of my favorite snack recipes that I consistently make with stuff that I almost always have in the house that is both like nutritious, delicious and also like fairly cheap and super easy to make. So this first one I've been having ever since I was in grade school. I think it was like grade three or four. I had a really close friend who was getting bullied a lot in school and we decided to invite him over to our house for lunch because I always went home for lunch because I lived really close to the school. He lived a little bit further away and he always brought this snack and at first it was always like, man, that seems like kind of a crazy combination. But once I tried it, like I was hooked for life. Alright, so it's not the prettiest snack. I will admit that nothing that I've made here today is really all that pretty. You guys know that like food styling is not a forte of mine. But anyways, so here it is basically peanut butter on top of some apple with a bit of cinnamon sprinkled on top. So the cinnamon is my own addition. He just did the apple and peanut butter and he used to call it apple blobs and I've always called it since then. So we'll refer to this one as apple blobs. So it's really easy to make. You basically just get a nice crisp apple, you chop it up, you smother it with some peanut butter or another nut butter if you like. Almond butter goes really well on this. You could use sunflower seed butter, really whatever you want. And then yeah, just sprinkle some cinnamon on top and you are ready to go. But just remember when you are eating apples, always eat the skin, leave the skin on because so much of the nutrition is in the skin. And in fact, the skin has five times more antioxidants in it than the inside of the apple. So you definitely want to eat the whole thing. And peanut butter on banana is like another favorite of mine. If I don't have any apples or if they're just like totally out of season, that's another really good one. So this second one, I definitely didn't invent either, but it is so simple and surprisingly satiating. And that's why it makes my cut for one of my top five favorites. So you guys know this as ants on a log probably, but it's basically just some celery with some nut butter and then some raisins as well. And here I've used dates instead. I sliced dates just in case you don't have any raisins in your house, you were looking for something else to do this with. And I've also used two different nut butters here. So the first one I did was sunflower seed butter. And then the second one I did was peanut butter because I love peanut butter and I could have it on just about everything. But if you're looking to make the choice based on nutrition alone, I would definitely choose the sunflower seed butter. It's going to be a bit more nutritious than the peanut butter. So this one's really good because it hits on like a bunch of those different like taste buds and pleasure receptors in your mouth that you want to hit on when you're having a snack. So it's crunchy for one. And it's also got some nice delicious fats in there from the nut butters. It's sweet from the raisins or the dates, depending on what you use. And you also get a little bit of like that saltiness from the celery. So yeah, I think this is like one of the most perfect snacks. I love it. And if you guys saw my most recent video on the celery and celery juicing, you will know why celery is so good for us. But I don't have to tell you guys it's a healthy food. You already know that celery is good for us. I mean, it's got lots of water in there, lots of fiber, lots of minerals and vitamins. It's also got lots of naturally occurring nitrates, which are amazing for athletes. So yeah, definitely one of my favorite snacks. So another snack that I always have around as one of my go-tos is just a good, simple trail mix. So this is something that is really convenient to just have like a little jar of this on hand all the time because you can just kind of walk by, grab a little handful and you know, chomp away on it as you walk around the house or tidy or watch a video or whatever it might be. So chances are you already have some nuts and seeds and other things in your cupboard already. So it really shouldn't be hard to throw a little trail mix like this together. And it's so convenient just to have around the house, like already have it made up so you can just like grab it and go if you need to. Super simple. And I mean, the varieties are endless, right? So in this one, I just have some pumpkin seeds, some sunflower seeds, some raisins. We've got some pecans in there, some Brazil nuts as well. We know Brazil nuts are a really great source of selenium. Those other nuts and seeds, really good sources of vitamin E as well. And then we've got some raisins in there, some goji berries, both of those to add a little bit of sweetness. Yeah, it's like looking like a really nice trail mix. Oh, and I did throw in some cacao nibs as well. So rather than throwing in some like sugar, sweet and chocolate, you can throw in just straight cacao nibs and they add that nice, deep chocolatey flavor to your trail mix. And on their own, I find them a little bit bitter, but once you mix them up with everything like that and you get a bite with like some raisins and goji berries and nut seeds and some cacao, you are having a good hike. So I can't really say much else about trail mix. Just mix up some dried fruit with some nuts and seeds and you're golden. But do keep in mind it's a very, very dense source of calories. So just be mindful of that when you are eating it. So this next one is a bit more of like a small meal than it is a snack, but I often eat this as a snack. So I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's kind of an unusual combo you might not think about. We've got avocado on toast, but the secret lies in beneath. So I added some miso paste and some mustard to it as well. And let me tell you, it takes it to a whole other level. You think you've had avocado on toast before, but honestly try it like this. So yeah, this sandwich is awesome as it is, but then I remembered I had some hot sauce. The hot sauce just wakes it up a little bit and let's face it, so many things are better with hot sauce. So one thing you do want to be mindful of is the type of bread that you're choosing. So anytime you buy bread, you just want to make sure that you're getting a good quality bread. I often get asked, Derek, is bread healthy? And it's like, there's so many different types of bread out there. That's a really tough question to answer in just like, you know, one word, yes or no. It depends on the type of bread. It depends how it's made, how much fiber there is in it, how many nutrients are in it, whatever. So here's a couple of rules of thumb that you can follow when you are choosing bread. So you want to make sure that the first ingredient says that it's whole grain bread. You want to make sure that it says whole in the first word, not, you know, sifted flour or enriched flour. No, you want to say whole grain flour. So even if the first ingredient does say whole wheat flour or whole grain flour, you want to make sure that it follows the five to one rule. And basically that has a five to one ratio of carbs to dietary fiber. So you want anything less than a five to one ratio. So as we look at this Dempster's whole grain bread I have here, you can see that the first ingredient is whole grain flour. But then we look at the carb and fiber content and we're looking at two grams of fiber to every 17 grams of carbs. And if you do the math that comes out to ratio 8.5 to one. And we want to be at five to one or under. So that's not going to make the cut. So the next one we look at is this sprouted grain bread and the ingredients look good on there. And as we look at the fiber to carb count, it's four to 14, which is good. That equals a 3.5 to one ratio. So this bread is good. And even better than this bread would be something with fewer ingredients like this fermented sourdough that I have here. Fermented rye sourdough. This is from a local company and it is so dang good. And that's actually the same company that makes the bread that I'm using here for the sandwich. So it's just a rule of thumb to kind of check out when you're buying bread. It's not like absolute rule law that you have to live by. If you find something that has like a six to one ratio and it looks like it's made of really good ingredients and you really want to try it, like go ahead and do it. But I'm just throwing it out there. It's something to keep in mind and it's a neat little ratio to compare. All right. So the last snack that I'm going to show you is probably my favorite. And actually, I think I've said that about just every one I've made so far. I love food. So this last one is just a simple fruit salad. You can never go wrong with whole foods. Fruit for the win. Fruit is the ultimate go-to snack for me. Whenever I'm in a rush, I'm running out of the house or I know that I'm going to be somewhere that doesn't have any vegan friendly food, I always grab a couple pieces of fruit before I leave the house. And if I'm just stuck and I don't know what to eat for a meal or a snack, boom, fruit is always there for me. It's always a good choice. It is the original fast food. It comes pre-wrapped with biodegradable package. It fits perfectly into your hands. It's bright. It's colorful. It grows on trees that we can easily climb to get the fruit. Once we eat the fruit, we can then take the seed from that fruit and plant it into the ground to grow hundreds and hundreds of more fruit trees. And I know a lot of you guys worry about the sugar that's in fruit. You say, Derek, I know sugar is bad for us. So fruit probably isn't good for us either. But free sugars from processed foods like white sugar and like high fructose corn syrup and all that crap reacts totally differently in our body to fiber bound sugars that we get from fruit. So even beyond the fiber slowing down the absorption of sugars, there's other things in fruit. There's antioxidants, polyphenols, other things that help to blunt the spike in sugar and fuel our bodies with healthy nutrients and other things that we need. So in this colorful mix, you can see that I have some apples. I've got some oranges, got some kiwi, some banana. And then I went and threw some hemp seeds on the top of it as well, just to get some healthy fats in there, some good omega threes, and then also some protein as well. So that's it for this video. Thank you guys so much for taking time out of your busy day to click on my video and watch it. I definitely appreciate it. If you liked it, hit the like button. And if you want to see more from me and you're not already subscribed, I would love for you to subscribe to my channel. I got lots more content coming. I'm every single week and it might increase to three days a week as the summer gets closer. And I have more to film because I'm not just stranded inside here in my kitchen. So much love to all of you. Thank you guys. As always, leave your questions and comments down below and let me know your favorite vegan snack. Maybe I can add some more to my repertoire. Repertoire? Who uses that word?