Healthy treats for kids at Christmas

The Christmas period has for sometime been a bit of a ‘sweetfest’ for children, and for adults too! The shops, and our television screens, are packed with enough confectionary products to give dentists nightmares, as well as a steady income stream in fixing tooth decay caused by excessive sugar consumption.

 

Containing your children’s sugar consumption at this time of year can be an uphill battle, and one that the little folk tend to often win. However, if you’re determined to ensure that your offspring still eat a balanced diet over the festive period, at Mundo Mania, we suggest that you use some of these tasty tricks to lure them away from the assorted chocolates that they would happily consume from breakfast to bedtime.

 

Cereal power bars are a snack solution that only takes 15 minutes to put together and 30 minutes to bake. They contain high fibre bran cereal, beans, dates, coconut, honey, avocado oil, brown sugar and a small amount of chocolate chips. Throw everything in a food processor, blend and turn into a baking tray and you have 12 energy-boosting bars that are much healthier than crisps or sweets when kids are hungry in between meals.

 

And if you want to make fun-filled Christmas snacks that are all made from fruit, yet each one has a Christmas theme, then these 18 Healthy Christmas Snacks from Healthy Little Foodies is inspirational. Plus, making them is an ideal activity that you can share with your children and help them to learn the pleasure of ‘cooking’ as well as eating healthily. The watermelon or kiwi Christmas trees and the melon and raspberry snowmen look cute and there are ideas using bananas, strawberries and a fun idea using apples, peanut butter and a cookie cutter to make a festive sandwich.

 

 

Here’s another idea: make a Christmas Tree Veggie Snack Plate, using cucumber slices to make the tree, cherry tomatoes as colourful decorations alongside star shapes cut from carrots and crispbread or a rice cake for the tree trunk. Orange-flavoured muffins made using whole grains, including seeds, carrots and spices are also bound to go down well at breakfast.

 

And, if you want them to enjoy some of the more traditional Christmas treats, which they can also help you to make, this selection of cakes and biscuits from BBC Good Food includes gingerbread men and polar bear peppermint creams. Yes, these are sugary, but homemade treats are so much more fun and parents are in control of the ingredients used, which can’t be claimed for shop-bought products.

 

However, if you’re stressed out in the run up to Christmas and exhausted afterwards, at Mundo Mania we have an appetising menu that caters to both children and parents, and you will find a host of healthy eating options here, including gluten-free dishes. Also, visiting Mundo Mania, the coast’s leading kids’s play centre, is an opportunity for the kids to burn off excess energy, which in turn makes them hungry for a balanced meal, rather than a quick sugar fix.

 

Don’t forget, exercise is also important for your kids. At Mundo Mania we have both indoor and outdoor play facilities including play frames with ball parks, table top games, climbing frame, trampolines, water park, sports pitches and more! It’s the perfect place to burn off excess energy in the run up to and after Christmas.

 

The Mundo Mania team would like to wish all our customers a very happy and healthy Christmas and look forward to seeing you all in the New Year.