The 8 Healthiest Energy-Boosting Snacks in the Vending Machine
If your only option is the vending machine, then these are the snacks to get you through the mid-afternoon slump at work.
It’s 2 p.m., you’re back at work after a good year of WFH, and the afternoon snack attack rears its ugly head. With the remainder of your lunch coagulating in the trash can next to your desk, you're faced with two options: the leftover donuts going stale on the breakroom table…or the vending machine.
Ah yes, the vending machine: A generally robust apparatus replete with a selection of foodstuffs of varying nutritional quality. A bag of Cheetos? This can work for a moment with those few first cheesy bites hitting the pleasure points in your brain, but the uptick in energy you're hoping to find is minimal — in fact, you'll likely end up more tired and hungry than before you ate the cheesy curly-qs.
According to Ingrid Stutzman, a personal trainer and nutritionist in Lake Tahoe, California, "to boost your energy, you need snacks with some protein, complex carbohydrates with fiber, a bit of fat, and not too much added sugar."
But there is sometimes not a morsel of protein in any of those vending machine snacks.
