How to Get More Paleo-Friendly Snacks in Your Diet

Snacks are an important and healthy way to fuel your body in-between meals. But when you follow a paleo diet, things can get tricky when it comes to snacking. Avoiding grains, dairy, and other products that only became available after farming, means a lot of traditional snacks are off-limits. Here are some tips on how to get more paleo-friendly snacks in your diet.

Dehydrate Fruit

Fruit is nature’s candy, sweet, juicy, bursting with flavor, and rich in nutrients. Fruits are wonderful foods that should play a bigger role in your diet. Carrying around fruit as a snack can be challenging though, because it needs to be kept refrigerated if it’s not going to be consumed quickly. Dehydrated fruit, on the other hand, is shelf stable and easy to take on the go. You can purchase dried and dehydrated fruit at the grocery store, or make it yourself! Just place strips of fruit in a dehydrator and bake for 6-8 hours, until the fruit has dried. It is fun and easy, and tastes delicious.

Make Jerky

If you’re a fan of jerky, you’ll love making it at home. Jerky is dried and cured strips of meat. Jerky has been around for hundreds of years, and is a method used before refrigeration to preserve meat. And it is very easy to make jerky at home, you just have to dehydrate it.

Dehydrating meat removes 80% of the water. This will shrink the meat strips a bit, but also make it chewy and snappy in the jerky way you love. Removing the water is also a large part of what makes a jerky shelf-stable. There are tons of recipes available online to make your own jerky to check out.

Snack on Trail Mix

Lots of trail mixes are paleo, as long as you stick to the ones that are made with nuts, seeds, fruits, and nothing extra like chocolates or pretzels. Trail mix is a great way to get a burst of energy from a good mix of healthy fats and protein. And it’s so easy to make your own at home using exactly what you like.

Following a paleo diet doesn’t mean you have to give up snacking. With a little preparation, you can have delicious and crave-worthy snacks that are paleo-friendly. Give these tips a try and see what is your favorite paleo-friendly snack!

Read this next: How to Listen to Your Body as You Eat