I have been packing snacks since last Thursday- stuff in my Tupperware: dried apricots, raisins, oranges, grapes, banana, baby tomatos and baby carrots, dried pumpkin seed.
Where to get your snack supplies 🙂
1. Dried fruits & nuts: Shops selling baking supplies
– find shops that specialised in baking supplies such as flour, cake products & equipments. They sell dried foodstuffs including: pumpkin & sunflower seed, almonds, walnuts, apricots, raisins, mixed fruits, cashew nuts.
The price is cheaper than Carrefour or grocery stores. It is also much fresher.
Example, a shop called Bake with Yen in SS2, Petaling Jaya- it is located in the shoplots between Fatty Crab and Maybank. There are 2 stores there- Bake with Yen & Chang Tung. Bake with Yen is cheaper.
2. Fresh fruits- from the markets
If you do not have time to visit the morning markets, try the night markets near your place. You can stock up a week’s supply in your fridge.
3. Cold Storage
I used to visit other hypermarkets like Carrefour and Tesco- and still go there to get the family’s groceries. However, I find more health food options & varieties in Cold Storage- like I can get peanut butter with no added sugar, diabetic jam (haha, go sugar free mah) and no sugar added bread. Also baby carrots and tomatos.
4. Indian speciality grocery stalls.
You can find them in Bricksfield or Jalan Masjid India. They sell all kinds of spices, and food dressings very low in calories like lime and vegetable pickles. Buy a bottle and try out if the taste is suited to you.
Aside from that, you can find lots of treasures from such stores: Tusita sandalwood (if sold in other stores, it is very much expensive), fragrant incense sticks- which I love using.
Try to avoid using mayo, thousand island or other salad dressing sauce coz all are high in calories (please note that those in reduced sugar translates to higher sugar). If you can, try to eat salad/food raw. After a while, you can taste a certain richness in natural food. Last year, I roll my eyes when I hear that- but now, I find that to be extremely true. Mixture of raw fruits with raisins really taste better than nyonya kuih or a sweetened drink.
If you are like me (I also noticed many of my colleagues also love to snack), take ample supply of nutritious fruits, seeds & nuts with you to work. You get to keep the muching habit and not deprive yourself. What’s more, you will end up eating towards a better health, with less calories and you will feel better.
You will never gain weight from raw or coekod fruit or vegetables but dried fruit could be fattening if you consume it in very large amounts as dried fruit contains a lot of sugar. The natural sugars in raw or coekod fruit are not fattening.
Hi Roberto,
Good point there. Thanks for the feedback.