Trail Mix

A lot of people have the misconception that trail mix is a healthy snack. It could be healthy snack, especially if you make it yourself, but it's not always. A handful (quarter cup) is usually a serving and that could put you close to 200 calories. Who eats just one handful of trail mix?? Not me! So I decided to make my own in an attempt to make it healthier than the store bought kind.

First, I looked at all the nuts. Now, I'm really picky when it comes to nuts and unlike most people, I don't like most of them, especially pecans, walnuts, and the other big (in size) ones. I pretty much only like cashews, peanuts, and almonds. These are probably the worst 3 three for you. David and I briefly did look at seeds to see if that would be any better but decided against them. We already had cashews at home so we knew we'd be using those. Then we compared the nutrition facts of the peanuts with the almonds. For the most part, the almonds were healthier (although not by much) but the peanuts had more protein. Since this snack was to help get more protein in our diets, we decided on the peanuts. If you're healthier than me (which guessing by the fact you're reading about this, you probably are, you might want to pick a healthier nut. Be sure to compare nutrition facts and keep in mind which nutrients are most important to you.)

Then we needed something naturally sweet. They typically put raisins (with hydrogenated oils and other preservatives) in store bought mix. We looked at the whole aisle of dried fruits. (These things are not cheap! But then again, neither are the nuts.) We did decide on raisins but ours are only raisins. No preservatives, fats, or other processed things. Just good old raisins (which is probably why when I went to make the mix, they're all stuck together in one big block). There are plenty of other dried fruits to try but to be honest, we don't really like dried fruit. Actually, we don't even really like raisins (makes you wonder why we're making trail mix when we don't like nuts or dried fruits but somehow everything tastes good together).

Lastly, we decided it needed chocolate or there was a good chance we were never going to eat this (again, why do we like trail mix?). We debated between Reese's Pieces and regular M&M's and decided on the latter. We didn't want a candy that didn't come in it's own shell or it might melt and get messy and the Pieces probably would've been too much peanut taste (since we were already using peanuts).

So that is our mix. It's actually the same ingredients as the one we had bought previously from the store but (minus the candy), we were able to make slightly healthier choices (obviously, we didn't go much healthier than the store bought kind but I do believe it also comes out cheaper this way. With a little help from nutrition labels and ingredient lists, you should be able to make yours better while still keeping the taste you love).

I would like to point out that I've made trail mix in the past and it was raisins, pretzels, M&M's, almonds, and peanuts. There are so many variations out there but I think the idea behind it is to have sweet blend with salty and to have a source of protein, especially if this is the kind of thing you're going to take hiking. Let me know in the comments what recipe you use!