Video | Fruit | Nuts | Nut Butter | Yogurt | Cottage Cheese | Cheese | Hard-boiled Eggs | Beef Sticks | Hummus | Pork Rinds

Ideally, you want to fill up on hunger-satisfying foods at mealtimes to limit or avoid snacking. But life is unpredictable, and sometimes you just need a little something. Finding satisfying snacks without added sugars can be challenging, but plenty of delicious and healthy options exist. Here are ten great choices that require zero cooking.

No-Added-Sugar Snacks [Video]

Fruit

I will start with fruit because it is nature’s sweet treat and the snack I am most often asked about. Fruits contain vitamins and minerals and a satisfying touch of sweetness. But what if you are trying to control your blood sugar or follow a low-carb diet to control your weight? Is fruit okay? It can be. But fruits vary in their sugar, carbohydrate, and fiber content, making some fruits better choices than others.

Berries and melons are good choices based on their carb and fiber content. Oranges and apples are okay. Grapes and bananas are high in carbs and low in fiber, making them the least diet and blood-sugar-friendly fruits.

More bad news for bananas: The riper the banana gets, the more of its starch content gets converted to sugar, making it an even poorer choice.

Pro Tip (Fruit)

Because fruit is sweet and influences your blood sugar levels, you may want to pair fruit with protein and fat. This combination of nutrients slows down the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, providing a more balanced snack that curbs hunger.

Fortunately, the remaining snacks give you that desired protein and fat. So, let’s go through those.

Nuts

Whether eaten alone or paired with fruit, nuts provide the great taste, protein, and healthy fats you want in a no-added-sugar snack.

Looking at their carb and fiber content as we did with fruit, good choices include Brazil nuts, pecans, Macadamia nuts, and walnuts. Almonds fall into the okay range.

Pistachios, cashews, and peanuts, which are all technically not nuts, are relatively high in carbs. That fact does not eliminate them as no-sugar-added snacks, but it does make them the least favorable choices for those looking to control their blood sugar and weight.

Pro Tip (Nuts)

Packaged nuts are often roasted in cheap, unhealthy oils and then flavored, making them hard to stop eating. For hunger satisfaction, it is best to buy nuts raw, so when you head to the grocery store, avoid packaged nuts found in the chip aisle and instead shop for them near the produce aisle.

You can toast raw nuts at home to enhance the flavor and crunch. Place them in a 350°F (180°C) oven for 5 to 8 minutes or until fragrant and golden.

Nut Butter

Grind nuts down and add some oil, and you get nut butter. If getting sugar out of your diet is your primary goal, unsweetened nut butter like almond butter, cashew butter, and natural peanut butter can be used as a snack.

If weight loss is part of your goal, nut butter is a risky snack because it is easy to eat too many calories.

Pro Tip (Nut Butter)

You can buy nut butter in individual servings, making portion control much easier. You can find individual packets at convenience stores and on Amazon.

Yogurt (4 to 5% milk fat)

Any snack that promotes the health of the gut microbiome is worthwhile. Yogurt fits the bill, but with a third of the dairy aisle filled with choices, you have to know what you are looking for.

You can choose Greek or regular yogurt. Greek yogurt is higher in protein, whereas regular yogurt is higher in calcium. Either is fine. Just make sure you select a full-fat, unsweetened variety.

Pro Tip (Yogurt)

If you are lactose intolerant, you may want to go with the Greek version. Greek yogurt is strained during processing, which lowers the lactose content, so it would be the better choice if you feel uncomfortable with dairy foods.

Cottage Cheese (4 to 5% milk fat)

Like yogurt, as long as you steer clear of low-fat, sugar-sweetened varieties, cottage cheese works as a snack, and you can liven it up in the same way by stirring in fresh fruit or nuts.

Pro Tip (Cottage Cheese)

However, Keep in mind that cottage cheese has carbs, and the serving size is not large. You’ll find around 6 grams of carbohydrates in a half-cup serving. So, cottage cheese is not your best choice if your goal is to reach ketosis on a keto diet.

Cheese

In contrast, hard cheeses, particularly full-fat, aged hard cheeses like Cheddar, Parmesan, and Swiss, can be worked into a keto diet and are good choices for a low-sugar diet.

The bacteria and acids used in the making of aged hard cheese help lower the lactose content of the cheese. We think of lactose as that poorly tolerated substance in dairy foods. It is actually the naturally occurring sugar in milk products. In fact, if we translate the word lactose from its Latin roots, it is literally “milk sugar.”

So hard cheeses are good choices, but that doesn’t mean snack cheese like string cheese made from mozzarella is off-limits. Even though string cheese is softer, it is still fairly low in lactose, and the controlled portion size makes it easy to transport and avoid overeating.

Pro Tip (Cheese)

Soft cheese snacks do not include spray cheese. This manufactured cheese product is created in the factory, not the farmer’s pasture, and contains added colors, preservatives, and unhealthy oils.

Hard-boiled Eggs

One snack that I almost always have in my refrigerator is a hard-boiled egg. You can make your own, but you can buy them at the store if you want to avoid cooking completely.

Either way, boiled eggs are the best snack that I’ve found to knock down true hunger. That hunger satisfaction comes from the fact that eggs are mainly protein and fat.

The protein content triggers the release of GLP-1, which is the naturally occurring hormone that is enhanced by weight loss drugs like Ozempic.

The fat content adds to your hunger satisfaction by slowing digestion. We don’t always think of a hard-boiled egg as a snack, but it is a great one if you are looking for a way to bridge the gap between meals.

Pro Tip (Hard-boiled Eggs)

And, if eating for blood sugar control is your priority, a hard-boiled egg is a great choice. From my personal experimentation using a CGM, eating 2 1/2 hard-boiled eggs did not spike my blood sugar and instead provided a stable response with only a 12 mg/dL rise.

Beef Sticks

Another snack that is packed with hunger-satisfying nutrients is a beef stick. These convenient snacks give your body protein and fat without the carbs. That combination will stabilize your blood sugar and digest slowly so you can make it to your next meal.

Pro Tip (Beef Sticks)

While you wouldn’t think a beef stick would contain sugar, many commercial brands, like Slim Jims, do. Even if you buy beef sticks from a farmer’s market, you need to ask if sugar has been added. There are good commercial brands out there. I like Paleovalley and almost always have one of their beef sticks in my purse.

Hummus

If you are looking for a plant-based snack, hummus can work.

Hummus is made from chickpeas and ground sesame seeds or tahini. Chickpeas are high-carb legumes. As a creator who promotes low-carb living, I don’t often talk about hummus, but I do receive questions about it.

The downside of hummus is that it is a high-carb snack with about 4 grams of carbs per 2-tablespoon serving. The upside is that it contains a fair amount of fat and protein, which is a hard nutrient for vegetarians to get enough of. So, hummus made my list of top sugar-free snacks.

Pro Tip (Hummus)

With that said, an important consideration if you decide to pick up some hummus at the store is what you will eat it with. Hummus is a spread that requires some type of dipper. You will have a much healthier overall snack if you scoop out hummus with a vegetable rather than a chip, pretzel, or cracker.

Pork Rinds

Speaking of chips, crackers, and pretzels, you can buy these items without added sugar, but they are not part of our list because the main ingredient in them is flour. Flour is a refined carbohydrate that quickly turns to sugar when eaten. So when you eat flour-based snacks, you lose the hunger-satisfying benefits that you get from consuming slow-digesting nutrients like protein, fat, and fiber. That brings us to our final no-sugar snack, pork rinds.

While you will not get a substantial micronutrient boost from pork rinds, they do provide the mouthfeel of chips and crackers, and they are more hunger-satisfying because of their high protein and fat content.

Pro Tip (Pork Rinds)

If snacking on pork rinds is not what you want, they can be crushed and used instead of bread crumbs to make a keto-friendly breading. I share how to do it along with a recipe for breaded chicken in my blog post titled 3 Keto Dinners Menus under 10 Total Carbs.

Takeaway

Your body benefits when you take breaks from eating. Those breaks allow your blood sugar time to stabilize and reduce barriers to fat loss. But sometimes, you just need a little something to tide you over until your next meal.

The best snacks are those without added sugar or refined flour. These snacks curb hunger and provide essential nutrients without the extra sugars that can negatively impact health.

I hope you found some favorites in this post, and if you want to take your no-added-sugar pledge one step further, grab a copy of my newest book, Zero Sugar / One Month.

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.