Who says you can’t snack and stay lean? A food dehydrator and some creative recipes can easily help satisfy your cravings while providing you with nutritional benefits you never thought could come from snacks. Here are some techniques to improve the nutritional value of some favorite snack foods.

Make Your Own Chips

You can make your own savory chips while controlling the amount of sodium that goes into them. And better still, no oil or cooking is required! Using the drying racks in a food dehydrator to mix up your favorite veggie mélange you can have your own healthy version of kale chips, potato chips or any other veggie chips in just a few hours.

Make Your Own Dried Fruit

While tempting to the palate, most store bought dried fruits are high in sugar and sulfates and may not be an ideal to your muscle-building regimen. But now there’s a way to make your own health-conscious dried fruit snack with the Excalibur Dehydrator. Next time your bananas are about to go bad, slice them up and throw them on the drying rack for an easy snack. Combine with sliced apples, peaches, and pineapple for a homemade mix of fiber-filled, low-sugar, sweet treat of dried fruit. Or puree different fruits together to create your very own fruit leather.

Check out the great recipes on the next page for healthy, delicious, portable snacks that will save your diet while satisfying cravings.

Protein-Packed Snacks

So much talk of unhealthy fats and high sodium may have turned you off from one of the simplest protein snacks available to you: jerky. But by making your own you can control how much sodium, MSG, or unwanted fats from oils goes into the recipe. The Excalibur Dehydrator is the perfect tool for creating protein-filled snacks that won’t load you up with physique-killers.

You can make a variety of jerkies in 2 easy steps:

1. Cut your meat and soak it for 24hrs in your favorite marinade such as low sodium soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, or sugar-free barbecue sauce. The ratio is about 80% marinade, 20% meat.

2. Lay meat on Excalibur trays and sprinkle fresh ground black pepper over the top. For best results, use Excalibur’s Jerky Seasoning.

Click on any of the items below for the healthy and delicious recipe.

Kale Chips

Potato Chips

Butternut Squash Chips

Dried Apples

Banana Chips

Watermelon Jerky

Apricot Cherry Leather

Passion Strawberry Leather