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Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
In the last few years, school-friendly snacks have become increasingly popular — and for good reason. Given that roughly two students per classroom have a food allergy (see FARE stats), this is an issue that doesn’t just affect families of a food allergic child. This concern demands the attention of all parents.
Cross-contamination from exposure to another child’s lunch can be life threatening. Luckily, food companies have been addressing these concerns by creating product lines that protect children with severe allergies through making nut free snacks that are free from the most common allergens. The goal is in marketing these snacks to the entire classroom. Taking it a step further, school-friendly snacks are made inside dedicated nut free facilities. Tree nuts and peanuts are strictly prohibited from entering the facilities that make these school-friendly, nut-free snacks for kids. And, all employees are required to follow protocol.
Some classrooms are now asking parents to pack school lunches that are considered school-friendly, but others are even going as far as requiring only school-friendly packaged foods in the classroom to ensure there’s no contamination.
School-friendly snacks are exciting because they help foster a better environment in the classroom and help educate families that don’t have allergens understand their role in keeping classrooms protected. If you’re new here, welcome! Here’s a list of what we think are some of the best school-friendly, nut free snacks for kids.
Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
1. Best Overall: This Bar Saves Lives
If you’ve explored our website in the past, you're probably familiar with how much I love this brand! The company This Saves Lives is a give back company, which means they donate food for every snack bar box they sell. Who doesn’t want a little philanthropy mixed into their purchasing power? Their kid’s line comes with six different flavored bars and two different textures of school-friendly snack bars: chewy and crispy. All products inside the kid’s line are school-friendly and free from the “big eight”, which is a popular way of addressing the eight most common food allergens.
These bars are cute, tasty, charitable, and sneak in a whole serving of fruits and vegetables. They’re gluten free, non-GMO and taste great. We recommend starting with the This Saves Lives Kids Variety Pack (Amazon), as it's a wonderful entry into the world of school-friendly, nut-free snacks.
Last update on 2024-12-06 // Source: Amazon
2. Runner-Up: MadeGood Organic Granola Minis
These MadeGood organic granola minis (Amazon) taste like little yummy granola bites. But unlike traditional granola, these school-friendly snacks aren’t made with oats and nuts. Instead, they’re made with oats and crispy rice. And that’s why these dreamboats ended up on our school-friendly, nut-free snacks list. Each variety or flavor takes on a base ingredient. For example: chocolate chips, and then those chocolate chips are rolled inside gluten free oats.
The MadeGood Granola Minis have five flavors to choose from: apple cinnamon, strawberry, chocolate banana, chocolate chip, and mixed berry. Don’t fret about whether or not all flavors are school-friendly because MadeGood’s entire product line of granola minis is labeled as school-friendly and nut free.
Each box contains four packs. And each pack contains one serving size. Each serving size contains ten whole grains. And similarly to the Kids Bars from This Bar Saves, each pack of the MadeGood organic granola minis sneaks in a full serving of fruits and vegetables. But your kids won’t be able to tell.
MadeGood uses vegetable extracts to pack in vitamins A, C, D, E, and B6 into every serving. The sources of vegetable extract come from real fruit and vegetable ingredients, all laid out in the label with ingredients you’ve already heard of and can recognize.
In terms of packaged foods, these school-friendly snacks are pretty whole foods based. In addition to being school-friendly they are gluten free, organic, non-GMO, vegan, and kosher.
You can find these MadeGood Granola Minis on Amazon, Vitacost, and ThriveMarket. Or you can find them at in-person retailers like Target, Cost-Co, Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Walmart, Kroger, and CVS to name a few.
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Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
3. Runner-Up: Enjoy Life Seed & Fruit Mix
The Enjoy Life Seed & Fruit Mix (Amazon) is another school-friendly, nut free snack for kids that’s reminiscent of traditional granola, sans nuts. Instead of creating nut free granola bites like the MadeGood Granola Minis, Enjoy Life created an actual snack mix. So if you’re more into loose granola than bite snacks, this is a good school-friendly snack to check out. It’s free from peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, dairy, casein, soy, egg, sesame, sulfites, lupin, mustard, fish, shellfish, and crustaceans.
Enjoy Life offers two different varieties of this school-friendly snack and I like both options. If I had to choose just one, it would be tough, but it would have to be the Mountain Mambo.
I’m a chocoholic at heart and can't deny it.
Of the two flavors available, it’s closest to what I would make for myself if I were making a trail mix from scratch. The Mountain Mambo is made of roasted sunflower kernels, pumpkin seeds, chocolate chips, and real dried fruit in the form of raisins, cranberries, and dried apples. It’s sweet and salty. And just really good.
Enjoy Life sells another school-friendly snack mix called “Beach Bash”. I like that one too! Beach Bash is made from sunflower kernels, dried pineapple, roasted pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, and dried apricots. It’s more fruit-centric. So if fruit is your thing, go for the Beach Bash line of these school-friendly snacks.
Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
4. FreeYumm - Soft Baked Bars
These FreeYum soft baked bars (Amazon) state on the label that they are free from the top 9 allergens. So these bars are free from the big eight, but then add in the ninth most popular allergen, which means these Honey Apple Soft Baked Bars, are also free of sesame and sesame seeds.
Sweetened with bites of apple, organic honey, organic palm sugar, and maple syrup, these bars will provide you or your child with sustained energy instead of a sugar rush. They are part of the non-GMO project and contain no genetically modified ingredients. They’re also made with gluten free oats. The bars also include sunflower seeds, to provide an added boost of healthy fats.
Each box contains five individually wrapped bars. Each bar is at approximately 120 calories and contains 2% of the daily value requirement for iron, 2 g of protein, 0 g of trans fats, 7 g of natural sugar, and 6 g of added sugar from the organic honey, maple syrup and organic palm sugar. They’re seasoned with organic vanilla extract and cinnamon, and made with no artificial colors, sulfites, flavors, or fillers.
These bars are tasty for all ages. But because they’re so soft, I highly recommend them for younger kids. I could see them being a really great option for school lunches and play dates. Everyone wins when there are more school-friendly, nut-free snacks available.
Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
5. Don't Go Nuts Organic Nut Free Snack Bars
We’ve reviewed the Don’t Go Nuts brand before, and if you’re interested in learning more about your options for alternatives to almond butter and peanut butter, be sure to read our review of the Don’t Go Nuts plant based protein spreads.
I’m a fan of the company Don’t Go Nuts because with them it’s personal. The business is run by parents of a child who, at the age of three, was diagnosed with a severe peanut and tree nut allergy. They take cross-contamination very seriously, and that makes me feel good about supporting their company. The Don’t Go Nuts nut free snack bars are school-friendly and contain no peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, gluten, eggs, dairy, sesame, coconut, or artificial ingredients.
The Don’t Go Nuts snack bars (Amazon) come in three different flavors, Blueberry Blast, Gorilla Power, and Whitewater Chomp. Blueberry Blast is a chewy granola bar with blueberries, Gorilla Power is a chewy granola bar with chocolate chips, and Whitewater Chomp is a chewy granola bar with white chocolate. They each contain 14 g of whole grains, are non-GMO, gluten free, and are of course, free from nuts. A handy addition to your pantry of school-friendly snacks.
Summary for These School-Friendly Snacks for Kids
How nice is it knowing that you can scan through any of these school-friendly snacks, pick whatever you like, and buy it knowing everything listed out in this article is made in a dedicated nut-free facility? Buying school-friendly snacks makes our communities safer. Teachers will be grateful, and so will the students. And they still taste great! It’s a win all around.
We hope whether your child has an allergy or not, you will keep these school-friendly snacks in mind when packing your child’s lunch. Keep every family in mind by keeping every child in mind. When you buy school-friendly it makes the kids who have life-threatening allergies feel protected and cared for. And it gives you, the parent, peace of mind.
Hope you enjoy these school-friendly, nut free snacks and let us know if you have some favorite school-friendly snacks to recommend!
Last update on 2024-12-07 // Source: Amazon
