Fun and Nutritious Kid Snacks: A Rainbow of Healthy Food

As parents, we are always looking for ways to get our kids to eat healthier meals. One fun way is to use rainbow colors to get kids excited about healthy foods. Two ideas are to build a "food rainbow" and to have a color of the day. Younger kids may enjoy trying to identify each color. For even more fun (and a better chance of getting your child to eat the snack), take your child shopping with you and, together, pick out food items together from each color of the rainbow.

Make a Food Rainbow

First choose a fruit, vegetable, or other healthy food item from each color in the rainbow from the color list below. Slice each food into slices or chunks. Then you need to set up your rainbow! You can arrange the items in a rainbow shape on a plate. Or you can arrange them in a circle on a plate...purple items in the middle, with blue items surrounding them, green items surrounding the blue, and so on until you reach the outer layer of red foods. A food rainbow is a great idea for a snack platter at a kids' party. You can also mix up the items to make a fruit or vegetable salad.

Fruit Rainbow

These are easy to make...there is an endless supply of colorful fruits to choose from!

Red: Strawberries, raspberries, cranberries, cherries, watermelon

Orange: Oranges, cantaloupes, peaches, mangos

Yellow: Bananas, star fruit, apples, pineapples

Green: Kiwis, green raisins, honeydew melon

Blue: Blueberries

Purple: Grapes (cut in half or quarters to avoid choking), raisins, blackberries, prunes

Vegetable Rainbow

A vegetable rainbow is a great way to make salad or as a vegetable dipping tray.

Red: Tomatoes (technically a fruit but they go better in vegetable salads than fruit salads), red peppers

Orange: Orange peppers, carrots

Yellow: Yellow Peppers, yellow potatoes, yellow tomatoes, butternut squash

Green: Peas, string beans, green peppers, broccoli, celery, cucumber

Blue: Blue potatoes

Purple: Purple carrots, red cabbage (despite the name, red cabbage is purple), purple cabbage

Healthy Foods Rainbow

You can mix these items up for a snack or lunch. You can also combine some of these foods with fruits or vegetables.

Red: Kidney beans, salsa as a dip

Orange: Cheese crackers, cubes of cheddar cheese

Yellow: American cheese, egg slices

Green: Green olives

Blue: Blue corn chips or blue potato chips (broken into bite-size pieces),

Purple: Kalamata olives, purple onions,

A Color a Day

You can also have each day of the week have its own color of the rainbow (and the 7^th day of the week can be rainbow day). For each meal, have at least one or two items in that day's color. For example, on Yellow Day you could serve scrambled eggs and cheese for breakfast, lemonade or water with a lemon wedge for drinks, cheese cubes and applesauce for a snack, and corn on the cob with dinner. On Blue Day you could have blueberries on cereal for breakfast, blue corn tortilla chips with dip for a snack, and blue mashed potatoes or blue baked potato wedges with dinner.