Salty tooth? Lucky you. Savoury is the easy one.
No sugar to fight, plenty of protein and fat to fill you up. The only things standing between you and a perfect snack are the salt shaker and the salami.
The short version
- Best
- Olives, nuts, cheese, eggs, vegetables with a proper dip.
- OK
- Edamame, roasted chickpeas, smoked fish.
- Never
- Crisps, crackers, pretzels, salami, jerky, anything fried.
- Watch
- Salt. Savoury snacks are where your daily salt quietly doubles.
- Our take
- A plate of olives, cheese and cucumber beats any bag from the snack aisle.
Same rule as the sweet stuff
A snack is part of a meal, not an extra meal. Eat it straight after your main course, or with a drink on Rebel Day, always inside your eating window. Nibbling cheese at 4 pm breaks your fast just as much as a biscuit does.
Bonus: if you drink, a savoury plate is your best friend. Protein and fat slow the alcohol down, and our alcohol guide says it plainly: never drink on an empty stomach.
Why savoury is easier
Cheese, nuts, eggs and olives are protein and fat. They fill you up, they barely move your blood sugar, and nobody has ever eaten a whole bowl of hard-boiled eggs out of boredom. The trouble only starts when the snack comes out of a packet.
Trap one: salt
The WHO says adults should eat less than 5 g of salt a day, about one teaspoon. The world average is more than double that, and most of it comes from processed food, not the salt shaker.1 Olives, feta, smoked salmon and salted nuts are all salty. That doesn't make them bad, it makes them portion-controlled. Ten olives, not the jar.
Trap two: processed meat
Salami sticks, jerky, cabanossi, ham, Leberkäse: they look like protein snacks. The WHO's cancer agency classifies processed meat as a known cause of bowel cancer, in the same evidence category as tobacco, though not the same level of risk. Every 50 g eaten daily raises the risk of bowel cancer by about 18%.2 Fifty grams is two slices of ham.
"Jerky is a great high-protein snack." It's dried, salted, often sugared processed meat. High protein, sure. Also high salt, and in the same cancer category as bacon. If you want protein, boil an egg.
"Veggie crisps are the healthy crisps." They're potato or corn starch with a bit of vegetable powder for colour, fried like every other crisp. The vegetable is in the marketing.
The good stuff, with proof
Olives and olive oil are the backbone of the Mediterranean diet. In the PREDIMED trial, 7,447 people at high heart risk were put on a Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil, a Mediterranean diet with extra nuts, or a low-fat diet. Both Mediterranean groups had about 30% fewer heart attacks, strokes and heart deaths.3 For full honesty: the original 2013 paper was retracted because of randomisation errors and republished in 2018 with corrected analysis. The result held.
Nuts have the best evidence of any snack: a handful a day goes with a clearly lower risk of heart disease and early death.4 Unsalted or lightly salted, one handful, portioned out of the bag.
Eat, forget
Eat
- Olives, around ten
- Nuts and seeds, one handful, unsalted or lightly salted
- Cheese: hard cheese, feta, mozzarella, goat's cheese
- Hard-boiled eggs
- Cucumber, peppers, carrots, radishes, celery, kohlrabi
- Dips: hummus, guacamole, tzatziki, Liptauer
- Cherry tomatoes with mozzarella and olive oil
- Edamame
- Sardines, smoked salmon, small portions
- Plain nori sheets
Forget it
- Crisps, chips, tortilla chips, "veggie" crisps
- Crackers, pretzels, Brezel, Salzstangerl
- Rice crackers and rice cakes
- Salami, jerky, cabanossi, ham, sausages
- Processed cheese slices and cheese spreads
- Fried snacks: prawn crackers, keropok, curry puffs, fried peanuts
- Flavoured seaweed snacks (oil, salt, often sugar)
- Instant noodles, "just as a snack"
Five savoury snacks worth making
Roasted chickpeas
A drained can of chickpeas, dried well, tossed with olive oil, smoked paprika and a pinch of salt. Oven at 200 °C for about 30 minutes until crunchy. Tastes like crisps. Isn't crisps. Not for keto: chickpeas have carbs.
Parmesan crisps
Small heaps of grated Parmesan on baking paper, 200 °C for 6 to 8 minutes until golden. Let them cool and they snap like crackers. Pure cheese, zero carbs, keto-friendly.
Liptauer with vegetables
Topfen or quark mixed with a little butter, paprika, caraway, mustard, chopped onion or chives. Eat it with radishes, kohlrabi and cucumber instead of bread. Vienna's best snack, now without the Semmel.
Devilled eggs, the honest version
Halve hard-boiled eggs, mash the yolks with Greek yoghurt, mustard, a little olive oil and pepper, fill them back in. No mayonnaise needed.
Cucumber boats
Cucumber halved lengthwise, seeds scooped out, filled with sardines or tuna mashed with lemon and herbs. Crunchy, fishy, full of omega-3.
Eat it where you live
Singapore and Southeast Asia
- Edamame with chilli and a pinch of salt
- Plain nori, tofu cubes, boiled eggs
- Skip the keropok, prawn crackers, fried ikan bilis and curry puffs
Austria, Germany, Switzerland
- Radieschen, kohlrabi and cucumber with Liptauer
- A piece of Bergkäse with a few walnuts
- Skip the Brezel, Salzstangerl, Kabanos and the Wurstsemmel
Need the crunch of a bag?
- A small bowl of plain popcorn, made at home with olive oil and a pinch of salt
- One slice of wholegrain rye crispbread (Knäckebrot) with cheese
- Lightly salted nuts instead of unsalted, still one handful
- Roasted chickpeas as your "crisps"
Still a no: crisps, salami and jerky as snacks, and anything fried.
Allergies and intolerances
Several of the EU's 14 mandatory allergens sit right in this snack list:5
- Tree nuts and peanuts: swap for pumpkin or sunflower seeds.
- Milk: swap cheese and yoghurt dips for hummus, guacamole and olives.
- Sesame: it's in hummus, as tahini. Make it without, or go for guacamole.
- Celery and mustard: both are EU allergens. Watch the vegetable sticks and the devilled eggs.
- Egg, fish, soy: skip the eggs, sardines or edamame respectively. There's enough left.
Talk to your doctor first if you…
- have high blood pressure: salty snacks count, and olives, feta and smoked fish add up fast
- have kidney disease: salt, potassium and phosphorus in cheese and nuts matter
- have gout: sardines and other small oily fish are high in purines
How savoury snacks fit into your plan
If you told Healthen me you prefer savoury, your dessert slot after the main meal becomes a savoury plate instead: olives, cheese, vegetables, a dip. Allergies swap themselves out automatically.
On Rebel Day, the BBQ is yours. Tomorrow the kitchen is closed anyway.
This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, talk to your doctor before changing how you eat.
Sources
- World Health Organization. Salt reduction, fact sheet. who.int
- International Agency for Research on Cancer. IARC Monographs evaluate consumption of red meat and processed meat, press release No. 240, 26 October 2015; Bouvard V et al. Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat. The Lancet Oncology 2015. iarc.who.int
- Estruch R et al. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts. New England Journal of Medicine 2018;378:e34 (republished after retraction of the 2013 version). doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1800389
- Aune D et al. Nut consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer, all-cause and cause-specific mortality. BMC Medicine 2016;14:207. doi.org/10.1186/s12916-016-0730-3
- Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers, Annex II (the 14 allergens). eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/1169/oj