As I was bumping around at home recently, I realized my dinner table had been taken over by snacks. The job I’m currently working frequently has mandatory overtime, up to 12 hours. In fact, quite soon it will be 12 hour days almost exclusively, seven days a week.

Now, I always pack a lunch: a hearty sandwich, greens, and a fruit of my choice. But that only lasts so long. So I’ve taken to looking (read: pestering my therapist/nutritionist, mostly) for whole foods snacks that carry nicely. I’ve talked about why good food is so stunningly important to wellbeing. It pretty much has to be lived to be believed, but you can read my guide and story about it here.

In an ideal world, you would start with fresh veggies and a healthy dip. And I do that at home, with fresh green beans, sugar snap peas, or snow peas. But at work I only have so much space, and the work refrigerator has Rules I don’t want to try managing. So instead I’m opting for mostly shelf-stable convenience foods and hand fruits, like apples, clementines, and grapes.

As I was clearing the table of my snack selections, I realized it might be helpful to I share what I’ve found. These are whole foods snacks a busy parent might also include in their kids’ lunches or household snacks with a clear conscience. Or snacks an overwhelmed autistic adult, like myself, might keep around the house instead of candy, cookies, and pastries.

Snacks Criteria

I have a relatively strict diet these days. The criteria, then, for these snacks I’ve welcomed into my home:

• must provide nutrition
• low sugar, keto, or at least minimal added sugar
• whole foods as much as possible- you can typically look at the item and see what it’s made of easily
• minimal or no added artificial colors, artificial preservatives, extra chemicals
• dairy-free, humane treatment and slaughter if it’s meat

Without further ado: the winners:

I’ll handle these healthy snacks by food type for everyone’s convenience.

Seeds and Nuts Clusters

We’ll start on the left side. On the top left is my new most favorite snack in existence: innofoods Dark Chocolate Keto Nuggets.

What they are: chocolate covered coconut, quinoa, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds. My God that chocolate is delicious. They talk about it on the back of the bag and I really don’t know how much is marketing and how much is true, but. BUT. That chocolate is delicious. I can and absolutely would consume a whole 16 oz. bag in one sitting if I wasn’t paying attention. I know this because I wasn’t paying attention with the first bag and I absolutely ate half the bag before I noticed. Then I noticed and had to make myself stop eating because I didn’t want to stop.

Like its orange sibling next to it (pecans, almonds, pumpkin seeds, and coconut- still good but c’mon, chocolate!), it’s a crunchy snack. If you like crunchy snacks, tree nuts, or seeds, innofoods seems to have cleverly balanced their sweet and salty to make a snack you really do want to just keep eating. (This is also why Pringles can be hard to stop eating, fyi.) However, the sweetener is a mix of erythritol and cane sugar. So it’s still keto-friendly in small doses. Just, y’know, don’t eat half a bag in one sitting.

I found these bags at Costco. You may want to check with your specific Costco to see whether they have these, though. The two bags are from two different Costcos. The closer one has the chocolate, and the other had the orange sibling. Innofoods also has a website.

Trail Mix

Moving on (reluctantly!), we have more typical loose trail mix. Loose trail mix is vaguely annoying to me because you need a container for it. But I do have some, so I still keep this around. There are two kinds of trail mix, which I typically just throw together like a madman. Also because they’re pretty good that way.

The first is a mix of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds. It is notably not keto, but in small amounts it’s quite good. The issue with dried fruit is that it’s often laced with sugar. It’s already fairly sweet as is, and then they throw more in to make it addictive and/or cover up poor quality fruit. Really, any trail mix will do. Just avoid the ones with candy and added sugar.

The second trail mix does claim to be keto, but includes dark chocolate nubbins as well as macademia nuts. I’m not a big tree nut buff, but they are high quality protein and staying power in a pinch. The dark chocolate nubbins are mainly why I mix the two mixes together. The fruit is sweeter than the nubbins, but chocolate is delicious.

Both of these trail mixes can be found at Costco. But really, any trail mix works as long as you avoid added sugar, artificial colors, and outright candy.

Protein/Convenience Bars

Onto the wrapped bars. These are terribly convenient.

Health Warrior seed bars are first up. Health Warrior was the only brand at my grocery store that was made of whole foods without a hefty helping of sugar. They have a website, and they do both pumpkin seed bars and chia seed bars. It’s all been good. These fit the typical granola bar niche, and they’re nourishing to boot.

Target’s Good and Gather protein bars are pictured, but they’re kind of the crappier, mainstream, cheaper version of the Health Warrior options. They’re not truly low-sugar, but they were one of the first things I found that fit the bill for what I was looking for. they are, at least, whole foods. And available in much of the US. I eat these sparingly, as treats.

No Cow Protein bars are probably the best proper protein bar option. They’re a bit more processed than the other listed bars, but nourishing and low sugar as well as completely dairy, gluten, and GMO free. Also, you can cover 99 cents’ worth of shipping and have three bars sent to you free, which is pretty much the best way to try stuff like this. I personally tried that free trial, then bought the variety pack you see above, and now have settled on four flavors I like best. They’re filling and stick with you, and for that reason, they’re the last thing I typically eat in a shift. Sort of a sweet yet satisfying ultralight dinner.

Meat Sticks

Chomps meat sticks are my current go-to for humane, whole foods animal protein snacks. These are the clean food versions of beef snack sticks. They’re available at several of my local stores, but you can also buy them online. Of the listed flavors, I’ve tried Original Beef, Jalapeno Beef, Salt & Pepper Venison, Sea Salt Beef, and Italian Style Beef. I’m not a huge spice fan, so I’m not bothering with the Jalapeno again (it wasn’t that spicy, mind). The Italian Style Beef tastes like pepperoni or summer sausage, which I’ll do sometimes but not every day. And the remaining three I enjoy greatly.

Paleovalley meat sticks (not pictured) are also a thing. I have yet to try these because I can’t find them in local stores, but my nutritionist swears by them and feeds them to her kids. The site has a whole blurb about why their meat sticks are superior to the typical kind, which would include Chomps. I have no doubt these will be fantastic when I finally get to try them.

Fruit Leather and Squeezable Snacks

Mamma Chia squeezes are maybe the closest thing I’ve got to typical squeeze fruit snack type things. I’ve seen applesauce packaged like this as well as other fruit-like products. Anyway, this is basically a fruit puree with chia seeds. I’ve found it at many of my grocery stores, and they also have a website. The chia seeds are a superfood, and they also add some texture to an otherwise basic smooth puree. I’ve had every flavor they offer except mango coconut. They’re all good. My favorite is Cherry Love (tangy!), with Wild Raspberry as a close second.

That’s it. fruit bars are the last item in the picture. I have the mini bars, which are at Costco, but they sell larger ones for a heartier snack as well. Their big selling point here is that the bars are literally just what it says they are. I have the apple/mango and apple/strawberry varieties, which are respectively 1 apple + 1 mango, or 1 apple and 12 strawberries processed into a fruit leather bar-shaped thing and sealed in a wrapper. They’re sweet and good, but not laced with colors, preservatives, or sweeteners. Also, at the time of this writing, all but two flavors are sold out, so I guess consider that a resounding vote of “yes, these are excellent.”

Bonus: Drink Mix

I’ve mostly covered food here, but there’s one thing that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention. I mainly drink water all day, every day. It’s tasty water, so I’m not bothered. But sometimes you really just want to have extra flavor and maybe some sweet in your drink. So, meet TruLemon.

TruLemon drink mixes are a fairly simple idea: low sugar, but not zero sugar, lemonades and drink mixes. I can speak for the original lemonade, raspberry lemonade, peach lemonade, and black cherry limeade flavors. They are all very good. Sweet but not overwhelmingly so. Not enough sugar to rot your teeth. Strong flavor. I’m mostly quite happy with water, but when I want to liven up my drink, this is what I reach for. Target and several other grocery stores carry these, and they have a website with a ton more options.