Snacks are often the most unhealthy meals imaginable – even when “sport” or “health” is written on the packaging. They often contain a lot of sugar, animal protein isolates and a lot of artificial additives.
Healthy vegan snacks for athletes are not always easy to find for quick snacking, unless you make them yourself. With a little planning and preparation, you can have some quick and easy go-to healthy vegan snacks before and after workouts. Or perhaps, before and after the busy carpooling of your kid’s sports, which inherently become your sports!
We introduce you to 21 healthy vegan snacks for pre and post-workouts, that you can, of course, enjoy even if you are not an athlete. There is also an easy recipe you can use to make your own vegan “cottage cheese” from only three ingredients!
Overview
Healthy Vegan Snacks
Snacks for athletes (but also for non-athletes) should meet some important criteria. Of course, you have to be in the mindset and understand the importance of HEALTHY snacks:
- Healthy snacks should be free of isolated sugars.
- Healthy snacks, if they have carbohydrates, they should contain complex carbohydrates.
- Healthy snacks should provide high-quality proteins.
- Healthy snacks should be free of synthetic additives such as artificial vitamins, preservatives, aromas, etc..
- Healthy snacks should be prepared as freshly as possible.
21 Pre- and Post-Workout Snacks – Healthy Snacks Before and After Training
If you want to benefit as much as possible from your workout, you should eat the right food before you do so. Because a pre-workout snack provides the necessary energy and helps to maximize training success.
“If I train without my pre-workout meal, my training isn’t the same and it just feels bad,” says Manuel Villacorta, nutritionist (also for sports nutrition) and author of Eating Free and Peruvian Power Foods. “However, if you feel comfortable after the right snack, you can train harder.” A pre-workout snack also prevents low blood sugar, which would otherwise make you tired and groggy.
After training it is almost even more important to eat the right thing. Because then the muscles need to repair, regenerate and build up more muscle tissue as well as replenish the now empty, glycogen reserves.
20 healthy and vegan snacks
Here are 20 healthy snacks that happen to be vegan. These can be prepared quickly and eaten half an hour to an hour before training or after training. The term “(NT)” means that each snack is an ideal snack for after training.
- Beetroot Juice
Let’s start with a very simple snack: a glass of beetroot juice. Beetroot is a vegetable that has very special properties for athletes: They can increase physical performance and endurance. We have described here how beetroot do this: Beetroot – The sportsman vegetable
Of course, a freshly squeezed beetroot juice would be perfect. The combination with apple juice is also delicious. But beetroot juice is also available in organic shops – as pure direct juice that has been fermented with lactic acid and is therefore much easier to digest. You can find some options by clicking here.
- Fruit Protein Shake
Mix 30 grams of rice protein powder flavor vanilla with 1 cup orange juice and 1 cup ice cubes.
- Chocolate Iced Coffee with Extra Shot of Protein
Mix 1 cup of iced coffee with 1 large spoon (15 – 25 g) hemp chocolate drink powder (25 percent hemp protein).
- Oat Special
Sprinkle ½ cup of cooked oat flakes with 1 tablespoon of dried fruit and 1 tablespoon of ground almonds.
- Berry Protein Shake
Mix 1 scoop of rice protein with ½ cup of ice cubes and 1 cup of frozen berries.
- Peanut Butter and ………
Cut an apple into small pieces and serve with 2 tablespoons of peanut or almond butter. You can even sprinkle some cinnamon on it. Delicious! Cut some celery sticks and dip in the peanut or almond butter, or spread on top for a quick snack. Adding a few raisins on top is also yummy!
- Fruit cup
Mix 1 cup of berries with honeydew melon pieces, banana slices and orange slices (or other fruits of the season) and sprinkle the fruit mixture with tiger almond chips.
- Fruit leather
Fruit leather consists of fine fruit puree, which dries for hours in an automatic dryer or oven, giving it the consistency similar to a fruit roll up! It is spread thinly on parchment paper and can be removed as a fruit mat after the drying time. The name sounds like something from the textile industry, but it refers to the surface of the fruit strips, which looks a bit leathery. You can find some organic fruit leather snacks in stores, just make sure you check the ingredients first. As always, homemade snacks, assure you have the freshest ingredients.
- Tropical Snack Mix
Prepare a student food mix of ½ handfuls of macadamia nuts, coconut chips, dark chocolate chips or chunks and banana chips.
- Sweet Potato Protein Shake
Add approx. 25 grams of rice or hemp protein, ¼ cup cooked sweet potato cubes, 1 cup ice cubes, 1 cup almond milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and ground cinnamon (to taste) to the mixer.
- Peanut Butter, Banana, Chocolate Shake
Mix 1 banana, 1 tablespoon peanut butter, 1 cup ready mixed hemp-chocolate-drink and ice cubes.
- Banana shake with soy milk
Mix a banana with 1 cup organic soy milk
- “Cottage cheese” with Whole Grain
Add to 1 cup of vegan cottage cheese – see recipe below
1 teaspoon of maple syrup
½ cup of Aronia (chokeberries. You can use extract powder as well)
Blueberries, blackberries or other berries of choice
Granola
Pinch of Cinnamon. (NT)
Vegan Cottage Cheese Recipe
Ingredients:
1 L soy drink (natural, unsweetened)
1 lemon,
25 g walnut oil or grapeseed oil
Preparation:
Heat the soy milk. Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat. Add the juice of a large lemon and stir with a spoon into the soy milk, which should now flocculate. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes. Then remove the milk from the stove and let it cool for about 20 minutes. Pour the flocculated milk through a cheesecloth. Let the “cottage cheese” drip off. The yield should be about 400 g. Now stir in approx. 25 g of an oil of your choice and season the “cottage cheese” either sweet (as above) or with salt and herbs.
- Spinach Peanut Smoothie
Mix 4 cups fresh spinach, 1 teaspoon Organic Chlorella Powder (provides 60 % protein), ½ cup vanilla soy yogurt, 1 cup almond milk, 1 banana, and 1 tablespoon peanut butter.
- Banana Toast
Spread 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut butter on a whole wheat toast and cover with banana slices. So simple, but oh so satisfying.
- Waffles with Almond Butter and Fresh Jam
If you make the waffles you can also bake a few extra and freeze them for a quick snack in the future. In the meantime, you can purchase whole grain organic waffles and toss them in the toaster or oven. Spread some almond butter and add a dash of fresh jam (mix fresh berries with dried dates) on the waffles and you have a quick “pick me up” snack.
- “Chicken” Nuggets with Sweet Potatoes
Do you have any baked sweet potato slices left from the day before? (Cut the sweet potatoes into slices, brush with some coconut oil or vegan butter and bake in the oven until soft). Then fry just a few “chicken” nuggets (from tofu) and eat them with the baked sweet potato slices. The flavor combination goes wonderfully together and at the same time provide high-quality protein and easily digestible but complex carbohydrates.
- Avocado Pasta with Smoked Tofu
Take ½ cup of cooked rice noodles (such as the gluten-free King Soba brown rice noodles). Crush an avocado with a fork and stir the avocado into the noodles. Fry approx. 100 to 150 grams of smoked tofu cubes and fold the cubes into the avocado pasta.
- Quinoa Peas Mix
Put ½ cup of frozen organic peas in a pot with some coconut oil and some water. Cook the peas for only a few minutes. Mix the peas with 1 cup of cooked quinoa and season the high-protein mix to taste.
- Tofu with pumpkin
Fry 100 to 200 g smoked tofu slices in coconut oil or vegan butter and a little water. Add in pumpkin puree or if your super ambitious, you can steam your own pumpkin and use that instead.
- Pita with Hummus
A classic, so simple and easy. Self-explanatory.
Snacks for Athletes with Healthy Organic Proteins
Protein powders are used in some of the above snack ideas. Always choose pure organic vegetable proteins for your sports snack. These can be mixed into an infinite variety of shakes, smoothies, and juices or stirred into cereals and breakfast mixes. You can get as creative as you like. Pinterest always has some great ideas too!
You can choose from: (click the blue for products)
- Rice proteins in nature, chocolate, and vanilla
- Hemp protein powder chocolate, vanilla, and coconut
- Pea protein
- Chlorella powder The Chlorella algae can be very well integrated into shakes in powder form. It consists of about 60 percent high-quality protein. In terms of taste, it goes best with green smoothies or protein shakes with a green component (e.g. spinach).
All the powders mentioned above can come in different flavors, so take a look at the links and you can browse a bit more for the right size and flavor to purchase. I make these shakes daily for my teenage boys and myself for a quick breakfast or in addition to our breakfast. My boys love all the different concoctions I can create!! Have fun with it and enjoy!
