Snack in the city

If you have a long day at work, like most city folk, you're likely to have long gaps between your breakfast, lunch and dinner. Combine that with a high stress/fast paced schedule and you're likely to experience some blood sugar lows in between that have you heading to the vending machine.

My observations are that a lot of city folk actually make pretty healthy meal choices but then succumb to salt, sugar and saturated fat laden snacks, such as crisps, chocolate and cakes when they get peckish in between meals.

But there are plenty of very healthy snack foods available in the city and if it's hard to get off the desk during the day just pick a couple up on your way into work so you've no excuse.

Here are my favourite, healthy snacks that you can easily buy in the city, but there's nothing to stop you bringing these in from home:

Edamame beans - a vegetable, a pulse and a source of protein - possibly the most virtuous of snacks. Available in small pots in most sushi places including Itsu and Moshi Moshi.

Fruit - available pretty much everywhere in handy snack sizes! If a piece of fruit doesn't fill you up on it's own have it with a few raw unsalted nuts to keep you going til lunchtime.

Fruit smoothies or vegetable juices - easy to digest and packed with nutrients. Crrush, Pod, and Leon all sell them freshly made and M+S and Pret berry smoothies are also good.

Toasted nut, seed or bean mixes - If you fancy something salty/crunchy avoid the crisps and get some soya toasted seeds or beans - The Food Doctor have brought out a new range available in supermarkets, M+S also do salted soya beans, but they're a bit too salty for my tastes.

Hummous - a good mix of protein and carbs so will keep you fuller for longer, dip in raw carrot, mangetout, babycorn, rice cakes, gluten free crackers or oatcakes. M+S and Pod do handy pre-prepared hummous pots with crudites.

Natural yoghurt or goats/sheeps or sojade soya yoghurt. Stir in a seed, nut and dried fruit mix as available in most supermarkets or a chopped banana. Pod also does healthy yoghurt, fruit, quinoa pots all ready for you to eat.

If it's more boredom than full on hunger that's making you want to snack have a herbal tea, or for something a bit more filling/comforting a rooibos tea with soya milk or decaf soya latte.

If you need something a bit more substantial, a lot of places now do mini portions of their full size meals:
- mini sushi packs (Itsu, Pret, M+S)
- mini salads (Pod, M+S - especially like their rice and aubergine salad or three bean salad)
- mini hot meals - Pod do minis of all their mains
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