Chocolate Changes for Responsible Snacking

Mars, the company that sells Snickers, Twix, M&Ms among other major brands, announced that it will limit candy bars to 250 calories each.  It plans top hase out king-sized candy bars by 2014.

Mars also announced these health-related changes:

• 25% reduction of sodium in their products
• a cease in buying advertising time/space when/where >25% of the audience is 12 years or younger

You might say, "so what?"  Well, to me, this type of change is a good faith effort to help improve our American food culture.  We seem to all understand that our current culture makes it hard to maintain a healthy weight - but we don't all agree on or know of ways to help improve that culture. I think this major food manufacturer is taking some good steps. Really, people, no one should eat a 540-calorie king-sized Snickers bar...and pretty soon, no one will.

Here is the brief article where I learned about Mars' planned changes.

Here are even more quick, healthy, "responsible snacks":

• fresh fruit
• handful of nuts
• handful of trail mix (nuts, seeds, dried fruit)
• baby carrots
• a yogurt
• slice of whole grain bread with peanut butter or other nut butter
• a glass of milk
• a cheese stick
• ants on a log (celery sticks with either peanut butter or cream cheese on them, with raisins squooshed in). It might sound funky but it's good! And it was the first snack that I ever made for myself - probably around age 4. (I've always been an eater!)

Happy snacking!