The Best Snacks to Bring Hiking with Kids

I have found that taking a lot of healthy snacks is key to an enjoyable hike with kids along. Kids deplete their energy quickly and it’s important to refuel their little bodies frequently. It’s common to wonder what snacks are best for kids to eat while hiking.

The best snacks for kids to eat when hiking are salty carbohydrates, such as crackers, snack mix, and trail mix. Bodies need extra energy in the form of carbohydrates when they are exercising to fuel muscles, while salt helps replace electrolytes lost during sweating and exercise.

Sometimes we get in a rut with our trail provisions, so I wanted to make a list of some of the best hiking snack ideas for kids (and adults, too!).

How to Choose Great Hiking Snacks

When choosing snacks for hiking, it’s best to go for protein, salt, and carbs. All of these are vital nutrients for fueling working bodies and providing immediate support.

We try to choose snacks that are lightweight, such as dried fruit rather than fresh fruit, especially when we have several small children joining us. If one or two of us are going to be responsible for most of the weight, we want to keep things as easy and light as possible. Often, as kids get older and learn to carry a pack, they can carry some of their own snacks. As they eat them, their pack will get lighter for the return trip when they are more tired.

Stick with snacks that aren’t messy to eat and are already in small servings. I often buy bulk items such as nuts, chips, and trail mix and divide them into individual bags or small containers before we leave. This is cheaper than buying serving-size packets and is easier than taking the whole bag and trying to hand out snacks on the run.

What About Sports Drinks?

Sports drinks are good ways to replenish the body’s electrolytes, but unfortunately, they also provide a large dose of simple sugar. This tends to create an immediate surge of energy and then a consequential drop in energy soon after. This is the famous sugar rush that parents try to avoid.

While there’s nothing wrong with a small sports drink, especially while hiking or in hot weather, it’s better if the drink is spread out over a longer time or sipped rather than gulped. This allows the body a more gradual and constant dose of sugar for fuel and minimizes the energy drop.

Another option is to simply choose electrolyte supplements that don’t have so much sugar. Powder packets or tablets that dissolve in water is one option, as well as sports drinks that are sweetened with artificial sweeteners. When using powdered packets, keep in mind that they provide adult levels of nutrition, and an entire packet is not appropriate for small children. Always follow the instructions on the packets.

Salty Snacks

While we’ve been taught to see too much salt as unhealthy, salty snacks are important anytime you are sweating or drinking a lot of water. Purified water contains little or no minerals and can actually make you thirstier as it leaches minerals from your body. If you are drinking a lot of purified water, it becomes even more important to make sure you’re getting enough electrolytes.

Salty Crackers
Trail mix
Chips
Pretzels
Jerky
Peanut butter
Cheese
Nuts

High Carbohydrate Snacks

When you exercise, your body uses energy in the form of carbohydrates. When you exercise more than normal, your body will use up energy faster. When your muscles run out of energy, you start feeling very tired. To support your body and allow you to hike farther without discomfort, fuel your body with complex carbohydrates as you hike. For children, this is especially important as their metabolisms are faster and they can’t store as much energy.

Children can get hungry very quickly when hiking or anytime they’re expensing energy faster than normal, and it’s important to feed them small carbohydrate-rich snacks often. Small children will want to eat every 20-30 minutes, while older children and adults can go for longer between snacks. Because we are snacking so often, I always package our snacks in small servings so it’s easy to snack often.

Sandwiches
Crackers
Chips
Pretzles
Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Snack mix
Dried fruit
Applesauce pouches
Trail mix
Granola bars
Fresh fruit and veggies

High Protein Snacks

Protein is helpful when exercising as it helps the body metabolize sugar more slowly and levels out the blood sugar system. It is also good for helping you feel nourished, limiting recovery time, and providing the support muscles and other systems need to rebuild. For this reason, protein is especially important after exercising. If you often feel hungry or shaky even though you’ve been eating plenty of carbohydrates while hiking, consider adding more protein to your snacks.

Jerky
Peanut butter
Summer sausage
Protein bars
Boiled eggs
Lunchmeat
Pepperoni
Tuna Pouches

Sugary Snacks

We usually avoid feeding our children much sugar and soda, candy, and sprots drinks are usually unheard of in our house. However, we make an exception for special occasions and while hiking. The easiest way to get energy is from sugar. One way to slow down the metabolism of sugar is to make sure it’s combined with other harder to digest foods, such as fat, fiber, and protein. For this reason a candy bar with nuts and other ingredients will metabolize slower than a candy that contains mostly sugar.

Cookies
Candy (especially candy with nuts and other salty ingredients)
Cheese dip packets
Fruit Roll-Ups

My Favorite Hiking Hack for Kids

My very favorite hack for hiking with kids is to hand out large suckers for the walk. We usually do this once we’ve passed the halfway point (for loop hikes) or are on our way back (for out-and-back trails). There are several advantages to this. First, it eases the boredom at the time when it is most likely to strike. It also provides them with something to look forward to and motivation to keep going. My kids know that a hike over 1 mile will earn them a sucker, and it’s become a fun tradition, even for the teens and grown-ups.

Finally, a large sucker provides a steady, small, instant dose of sugar for those tired muscles and brains, just when they are most likely to need it. Because suckers take a long time to eat, they aren’t as likely to cause a sugar rush, and because the sugar is swallowed in liquid form, it provides nearly instant energy.