Here's a learning opportunity for you and your child as the two of you prepare a healthy sack lunch.
First, the menu:
Use either peanut butter or almond butter to make sandwich wedges with low-sugar jelly spread onto one of the wedges. Use 100-percent whole wheat bread.
Add to the peanut or almond butter a few raisins, strawberries, applesauce, grated carrots, or other chopped up or grated fruits or veggies that will give the peanut or almond butter a bit of a crunchy feel.
Don't overdo this mixture, though, and, before you start spreading the mixture on the sandwich wedges, offer a taste to you child to see if she or he likes it. If your child doesn't, go back to only the peanut butter or almond butter.
What else to put in the sack lunch:
...And, now, the learning opportunity:
There are nutritional differences between peanut butter and almond butter. Which should you choose?
FitDay.com has an excellent explanation about the differences:
The nutrition of almond butter:
Almond butter is made by crushing and smoothing almonds into a paste. Almonds are a highly nutritious food. By eating almonds or almond butter, you get vitamin E, potassium, magnesium, iron, calcium and phosphorus. Almonds are a good fiber source and also contain protein. Because of their high monounsaturated fat content, almonds are considered a healthy food choice. Almonds or almond butter provide healthy fat not typically found in foods high in saturated fats.
The nutrition of peanut butter:
To make peanut butter, you grind peanuts and smooth them into a paste. Peanut butter is high in monounsaturated fats. Peanuts and peanut butter are a good source of magnesium, folate, fiber, protein and vitamins B3 and E.
To learn more--including the answer to the question, "Is almond butter better than peanut butter?--go to this FitDay site: almond butter vs. peanut butter.
Learn the difference between almonds and peanuts...
And, of course, the Peanuts we all love...
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