Local with Lisa: Finding Healthy Snacks at Trader Joe's

Lisa: Another day, another grocery store, with fitness trainer Mark Lynn, owner of Bay Functional Fitness. Hey, Mark. Today, we are at Trader Joe's. What are we doing here? 

Mark:  We are going to look for some healthy snacks. 

Lisa:  All right. What do we have here?

Shelled Edamame

Mark:  Okay, we've got Trader Joe's brand-shelled edamame. Already pre-shelled, ready to eat. So what you're looking for when trying to find healthy snacks is you want to find nutritionally dense but not calorically dense foods. So what we have is 100 calories per serving. So that's a lot of those. You only get three grams of fat, 100 calories, and nine grams of protein.

Picking the Right Yogurt

Plain Greek nonfat yogurt. Trader Joe's brand. I've seen other brands that are higher in protein. But this is the way to go if you're shopping at Trader Joe's. This one's got only 110 calories per serving, which is three-quarters of a cup. It's a lot and 17g of protein, which is a decent amount. So if you couple this with some blueberries, raspberries, or something like that, it's a great snack. Super low calorie, super high protein, and fiber. 

Lisa:  It's hard to eat, though—plain yogurt. 

Mark: I disagree. You just have to get used to it a little bit. If you had vanilla yogurt, you would have slightly more calories. But let's look at the sugar. We've got 13g of sugar and only 13g of protein. So, less protein means more sugar. For me, the trick is to always avoid as much sugar as possible.

Low Calorie, Full Flavor Cheese

Okay. So, Cheese. Everyone wants cheese, right? Yeah, I know I do. We’ve got Jarlsberg White. Jalsberg, If you know it's kind of a type of Swiss cheese. 

Lisa:  No, I've never heard of it. 

Mark:  You never heard of it? Oh, now you have. And you'll be back for it because it's only 50 calories for seven grams of protein.

Lisa:  What is a typical slice of cheese? 

Mark:  So check this out. So you're going to double the calories for cheddar. More than double for the same amount of protein. So 110 and way more fat. So in terms of protein for calories, this is the way to go. It tastes good. It's great. It's delicious.

So if you're ever in the mood for cheese and crackers and you don't want to have a particularly high calorie snack, these crackers are great. This is only 130 calories for 16 crackers, which is quite a lot. And you're going to get three grams of protein, which isn't much, but it's pretty low calorie, so you can eat a lot and it'll be very satisfying.

And then you can put that with some salsa that’s ten calories per serving, which is basically nothing, and have a little bit of Dijon mustard with that only five calories per serving. It's almost free food. Dijon with the salsa on a cracker is so good. You don't think so? 

Lisa:  I've never had it. 

Mark:  You should try it. It's really good.  And then put this with that Jarlsberg. 

Lisa:  Oh, all. All together at the same time? 

Mark:  Yeah, it's really great. Have it all the time.