Quick and simple snack and meal ideas for busy people

Many of us lead very busy lives between looking after our families, working and generally doing life, so finding time to prepare healthy meals and snacks can be challenging.

So, to help make it a little bit easier, here are our top tips for quick and simple snacks and meals:

• For snacks, keep it simple: Small snack bags of air popped popcorn, carrot and cucumber sticks with dip, Babybel or Laughing Cow single serve cheese, small container of nuts (around 12-15 almonds is a single serve), fruit, yoghurt pouches (avoid the flavoured high sugar variety. Natural Greek yoghurt and high protein options are better), protein bars, healthy nut bars or a protein shake/smoothie.
• For simple lunches: Try using left over dinners (always cook up a little extra so you can have some the next day), buy a roast chicken to break up and toss through a salad (either make your own salad or buy a pre-made salad bag from Coles/Woolworths/Aldi. Just avoid the dressings and use a balsamic or vinaigrette dressing instead), a tin of tuna/salmon tossed through a salad, premade falafel (can purchase from any supermarket) with veggie sticks, savoury egg muffin, frittata or wrap with chicken/ham/tuna/salmon/falafel/egg and salad.
• Dinners: Make up bigger batches so that you can have left overs for lunch or to freeze for future dinners when you are time poor. Stay protein focused and choose lower carb options to accompany the protein, this will help to keep you full for longer. How about making a simple Bolognese sauce and using zucchini noodles or low carb pasta (both available from any supermarket), stir fry using either chicken, beef, pork or tofu with some cauliflower rice or brown rice, a frittata or zucchini slice (homemade or purchase at the supermarket), grilled fish with salad, steak with steamed or roast veg or a slow cooked stew. To keep things really simple and time efficient, you can purchase premade bags of salad, bags of pre-cut veggies or frozen mixed veggies and then simply grill, steam or roast some meat/chicken/fish/veggie burgers/tofu to go with it. Use herbs such as garlic, chilli, chives, Moroccan spice, thyme, pepper, sea salt or add a splash of Tamari (low salt soy sauce option) or sweet chilli sauce. 
• Alternate meal options: If you don’t enjoy cooking or are generally very time poor, how about stocking your fridge/freezer with some ready-made meals. There are some great healthy options out there such as YouFoodz, Healthy Choice, Lite N Easy or Chef Good plus many more. The main thing to look for is that they are high in protein and have a good variety of fresh veggies and low GI carbs such as sweet potato, pumpkin, lentils, quinoa etc.
• Our biggest tip though is to BE PREPARED! If you have healthy meal and snack options available you are a lot less likely to reach for an un-healthy option when you are tired, stressed, hungry and time poor.