Great Pre-Dinner Snacks to Satisfy your Hunger without ruining your Appetite

Hunger works in mysterious ways. It lets you down half way through a delicious four course meal only to rear its head again around midnight when you are turning in for the day. Other times, it will creep up on you an hour before dinner and drive you so mad that you’ll be ready to chew on cardboard to satiate your hunger pangs. That’s when you reach out for those snacks which, eventually ends up ruining your appetite for dinner.

Well, there’s not much we can do to mend the truant ways in which hunger works, but we can suggest a few pre-dinner snacks that will fill you without killing your appetite. These are pretty quick to put together and most of the ingredients can be commonly found around the kitchen. Let’s get started and wage a war on those untimely bursts of hunger.

The easiest way to quell your pre-dinner “snacky” desires is to reach for some nut-and-dried fruit combos, such as pistachio and pineapples, hazelnuts and cherries, almonds and apricots, and peanuts and raisins. Grab about a handful of nuts, combine with quarter cup of dried fruit and chomp away. They are healthy, tasty, and pack in anti-oxidants that are good for your body. Easy enough to arrange, right?

The next few snacks are for those that like their snack cheesy. And yet, they are healthy, which means you don’t have to deal with post-snacking guilt pangs. First off, let’s fix you a quick antipasto platter. If you’ve got some part-skim mozzarella string cheese, wrap a slice of ham or prosciutto around it and have this with a few grapes and olives. Yummy, huh?

Or, you could take a cocktail size slice of whole-grain rye bread, spread spicy mustard on it and place a square of sharp cheddar cheese (no bigger than the size of the bread, mind you). Broil this snack till the cheese melts into a gooey mess and enjoy. For more zing you could also top with caraway seeds or a slice of tomato.

For the last “cheesy” snack you need parmesan cheese and pita bread. Sprinkle about 2 tbsp of parmesan cheese over whole wheat pita bread, taking care that it covers the surface evenly. On top of this dust a quarter tsp of dried oregano. Broil this snack until the cheese browns, cut into halves or quarters as per your preference, and enjoy!

If you are more the fruit kind of person and apples are your favorite, this snack is especially for you. Top apple slices with a quarter cup of low fat cottage cheese. Fresh apples can be replaced with the canned variety – cinnamon-spiced apple rings go particularly well with cottage cheese. Make sure you drain the canned apple of excess sugar, though.

As you can see, there are quite a few options for you if you want to snack healthy before dinner and these little bites don’t interfere with your appetite either. So, go ahead and munch away with relish and should anybody catch you snacking, pass the “bad habit” on to them, too!