My Favorite Snack

Cottage cheese with fruit

When I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes back when I was 8 years old and way before the internet, one of my favorite “healthy” snacks (and especially before bed/ and or late at night) was super “old school.” As in no fat/low fat, low salt/no salt, small curd cottage cheese with a quarter cup of unsweetened pineapples and a splash of pineapple juice and sprinkled with cinnamon on top. Seriously, it was one of my favorite snacks, EVER.

Nutrition information for my favorite snack

8.5 grams of carbs for the diced/unsweetened pineapples and roughly 4 grams of carbs for a half cup of cottage cheese or 8 grams of carbs for a whole cup. So we're talking around 12.5 or 16.5 grams of carbs, depending on how much cottage cheese I felt like eating. Sometimes my mom would mix it up and add a snack-size serving of unsweetened fruit cup or unsweetened peaches with a splash of corresponding juice from the can to the mix.

And it was a snack I could make on my own - which was a big deal for a grade-schooler. And like I said, I actually liked how it tasted so I would eat it!

My reasons for revisiting my favorite easy snacks

Recently, I’ve been revisiting my old favorite snack for several reasons.

I’m trying to keep my morning and afternoon snacks higher in protein and lower in carbs and calories, and I’ll take as much vitamin C as I can get without drinking it in juice form.

I broke a bone over the summer so I had to watch what I ate so I could keep my blood sugars in check, as well as my weight. Cottage cheese with fruit helped me keep things healthy.

Do you have any “back to basics” healthy snacks that you like, and if so, why? Also, can you please share with the class? On the flip side, what “back to basics” healthy snacks wouldn’t you touch with a ten-foot pole?