Forest Feast healthy snacking options (review)

"Mum, I'm hungry ... can I eat something?" - with three kids in the house, including one teen and one pre-teen who appear to be permanently ravenous these days, those are the words that I hear most often on a daily basis, especially when they've just got home from school ! I usually try to tempt them with fruit or yogurt, but most of the time, they want something portable that they can take with them to their bedrooms to do their homework / text their friends / jump on facebook / listen to music (almost definitely not in that order). Forest Fruit recently sent us through a selection of their healthy fruit and nut snacking options and I was pleased to see that the Madhouse kids approved.

You may remember that we reviewed some of Forest Feast's products a few months go (click through to read that review) and one of the Madhouse kids' favourite things was the sour mango, which has a soft chewy texture and slightly zingy flavour that reminded them of fizzy sweets. We were therefore delighted to discover that Forest Feast also have single portion packs of their dried mango available.

Forest Feast Mouth Watering Mango Singles are little nuggets of sweet golden fruitiness, while the Acti-Snack+ Sweet & Sour Mango Multipack offers larger strips of tart, chewy fruit. The large bag of Exotic Dried Mango is ideal for dishing out at home and can also be used in baking and cooking - I made mango muffins and also put some in a fruity chicken curry, which both worked very well and added natural sweetness.

Acti-Snack+ Fruit, Nut & Soya is a tasty, chewy, crunchy mix of oven roasted almonds, pumpkin seeds and soya beans with dried cranberries, which is gluten-free, high in fibre and a good source of vitamin E and biotin. It's lovely eaten straight from the pack by the handful but can also be sprinkled on overnight oats or added to muffins or even homemade bread.

Acti-Snack+ Fruit, Nut & Goji Berry contains almonds and walnuts with sultanas and goji berries, so you get a nice combination of chewy-crunchy textures and sweet-earthy flavours. This mix is also gluten-free and is high in vitamin E, biotin and copper. Pierre made me laugh by asking if he would look like C3PO if he ate lots of copper !

The perfect lunchbox or desk drawer option, Acti-Snack+ Fruit, Nut & Seed contains ... are you ready for this ? there's a lot of different things in this one ! ... cranberries, cherries, raisins, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds and cashews. You can either pick out each individual ingredient one by one as you snack or throw a handful in your mouth for a lovely mixture of textures and flavours.

On to the Madhouse kids' absolute favourite, because these taste just like white chocolate - Yogurt Cranberries. Now these do contain extra fat and sugar, compared to the other pure fruit, nut and seed mixtures, but they're still a healthier option than sweets or biscuits so they're a good snack swap.

I shared a blogpost earlier in the week with news of a recent study that revealed that a measly 1.6% of children in England receive a packed lunch that meets the nutritional standards set for school meals. Popping in a snack pack of dried fruit or nuts is a great way of making sure your kids get some extra vitamins and minerals in their lunchbox.

for more information : www.forestfeast.com

Disclosure : I received the products in order to write an honest review.