CHOCOLATE
COVERED BANANA “POPS”
With
the hot days of summer upon us, kids need snacks to cool down. So often, that means ice cream; after all, it is summer.
As a much healthier alternative to ice cream, why not treat your kids to chocolate covered frozen bananas! They taste
just like ice cream, and are loaded with disease-fighting antioxidants and potassium – and kids just love them!
They are so simple to make too! (An Added Bonus:
if you add some orange or orange zest to the chocolate (in our recipe below) you
are also increasing iron in your child's or teen's diet!)
Directions:
• Peel bananas
[Do not skip this step!]
• Insert a skewer or ice cream stick into each banana
• Put bananas in Ziploc
bags and freeze overnight
• Melt dark chocolate (70%+ cocoa, to get antioxidant benefits!)
• Dip each
frozen banana in melted dark chocolate* (covering just 1/3 of banana)
• Add fun healthy toppings, like nuts, sunflower
seeds, coconut, or granola [you may need to re-freeze for some of these]
*To infuse the dark chocolate with flavor, try this recipe for orange flavored chocolate:
Orange Flavored Chocolate*:
Ingredients:
- 4 oz dark chocolate
(70%+ cocoa)
- 1-2 tbsp coconut sugar or brown sugar
- ½ cup rice, almond, or cow’s milk
- 2 tbsp greek
yogurt
- 2 tbsp fresh orange juice
- Orange
zest (optional)
To
prepare:
• Melt the chocolate in a pan just until starting to melt then remove and stir until fully
liquid.
• Add in sugar to taste and then milk and stir in thoroughly.
• Stir in yogurt and orange juice
until thoroughly mixed.
• For extra orange taste, add 1 tbsp. zest (buy organic, if possible, and thoroughly wash
orange before zesting)
*By combing orange and dark chocolate you are adding a significant amount
of iron to your child's diet! That's because chocolate is a great source of
non-heme iron; but, it must be eaten with foods that are rich in Vitamin C, like oranges, for the
body to absorb the iron!
What are Some of the
Benefits of Eating Bananas?
•
Bananas are especially good to eat when you exercise or play sports, because bananas have a lot of complex, slow-acting carbohydrates
in them (which gives you energy for a long time when you exercise) and especially, because they have potassium in them.
• Athletes lose potassium when they exercise and when they sweat,
which can cause muscle cramping (especially very painful leg cramping) and an irregular heart beat.
• Eating bananas before and after exercise can help prevent you from getting muscle cramps.
• When you exercise, your body also loses a lot of water:
eating bananas also helps regulate the amount of water in your body (and can help prevent dehydration).
• Foods with sodium (or salt) also helps your body retain water, but high levels of salt can
raise your blood pressure, leading to stroke and heart disease, SO . . .
•
Bananas are such a great alternative because they contain no sodium and still help control the fluids (water levels) in your
body!
Here
is a list of some of the great benefits of bananas:
•
Good Brain Function: potassium in bananas helps deliver oxygen to the brain – so it’s a great BRAIN-BOOSTING
food: (ex. there was a clinical study involving 200 students who ate bananas 3x/day: found potassium boosted these
students brain power and made students more alert in class)
•
Helps Your Heart: potassium helps regulate the heartbeat and can prevent heart disease
• Protects against kidney cancer
•
Builds Stronger Bones: helps the body absorb calcium
• Protects
Eyesight (as good as eating carrots!)
• Reduces Anxiety and Stress
(such as before a test!): has something called “tryptophan” which makes people feel calm, happy
• Mosquito Bites: you can put the inside part of the peel on a mosquito bite and it will
reduce itching and any swelling
• Garden Fertilizer: banana
peels are a great organic fertilizer for plants and flowers, especially roses. Put banana peels at the base of a rose
bush and notice how it helps your rose bush grow!
Creative ways to add more bananas to your diet:
• Put on cereal
• Put in yogurt
• Blend with milk
• Put
in a smoothie
• Add to muffins, cakes before baking: as a banana ripens (the browner & uglier the banana
gets, the sweeter it becomes (this is because the sugar content increases when it ripens) – so you can use less sugar
in baking if you add a banana to the batter!
• Freeze and eat like an ice cream pop (for an extra special treat,
dip in melted dark chocolate and then dip in nuts, seeds, or coconuts!)
©2012 Kids Heart Felt Health Inc.
