Is there anything better than peanut butter? I will eat peanut butter on anything. I'll put peanut butter on waffles, I'll get peanut butter ice-cream, I’ll eat peanut butter snack bars. If it has peanut butter, I want to be involved. But you can't just eat peanut butter and you always think to yourself, man, I should mean something healthy. Well, as a runner, you want to know what that is.
But I'm Jesse Funk and on today's episode of Runner's High, I'm going to share with you my top five peanut butter snacks that are healthy for runners.
If you spend any time with me here on Runner's High, then you know that I've been running for a pretty long time, almost 20 years here competitively now. And I share a lot about what I know; how to run faster, all the techniques involved. And you also know I run my company Solpri, which makes skincare for athletes. So, I know a bit about taking care of yourself on top of the physical aspect.
What always perplexed me though, for whatever reason is, what should I be eating? Since I know you're here with me, I know you love peanut butter, so subscribe to the channel. Stay tuned with me because you and I we’re going to get along.
Because I have so much trouble trying to figure out what the heck should I be eating and there's so much misinformation on the internet, I decided to solve that problem by hiring a registered dietitian that can help me and help you figure out what should we be eating.
But not only is she just a registered dietitian, Gloria Stoverink, our registered dietitian here at Solpri is a former division one runner, and she still competes in long-distance running marathons, triathlons now.
So, she's still a competitive endurance athlete, as well as being a registered dietitian. And every single week, she releases a new recipe on our blog, Solpri.com/blog. And you can always keep track what she's bringing out snacks, regular meals, everything's very simple. So, I'm going to share with you five of the recipes that she's created for us. So, they're dietitian approved, that involve peanut butter.
Number one is peanut butter banana stuffed dates. These are super simple and that's one of the things that I kind of told Gloria, when we started working together. I said, hey, I'm tired, you're tired, and I know you're tired, so we can't really spend a lot of time cooking.
You know, we work out, we work, we have lives but we still need the well. So, she brought me this recipe. And really, it's just a matter of taking the peanut butter banana, blending them up their food processor, splitting the dates open and put it inside.
Gloria actually takes these on her bike rides, use them as fuel for during workout food. Instead of just using gels, she uses them to kind of mix up what she's eating because variety is the spice of life, right. But very simple to make just like all the recipes today.
Number two, a little more versatile, you can use it with a lot of things, dark chocolate almond butter. Now, I know we're talking about peanut butter for most of these four out of five. But if you love peanut butter, I know you've probably you know, branched out to other kinds of nut butter. It's inevitability, you're going to pick up something else, almond butter. I made walnut butter, I actually had my own venture doing that for a little while, but that's another story for another day.
You know, Gloria puts this together because although there's a lot of brands that you can go buy, you can pick them up, Justin's is one that comes to mind. There's nothing quite like just making it fresh, absolutely fresh as it can be, zero preservatives, is going to be this whole ingredients. And that's a lot of the focus that Gloria brings to us is whole ingredients, Whole Foods, no preservatives.
So, another simple one, take all your ingredients, put them in a food processor, you’re good to go. You can use this on toast in the morning for breakfast, or you know, even if you want to put it on a banana, and have it as a snack, great snack option, easy to do.
Number three, and this is the one you undoubtedly expected, peanut butter bites. These are everywhere, they're so easy, they're so convenient to eat. Once they’re prepped, you're good to go. I see these actually at the gym or the store. And it is convenient to pick them up there, but I know at least here it's at least $1 a bite, which to me seems a bit ridiculous if I'm honest.
Because when you make them in a batch, what you can do is freeze them if you're not gonna eat them all at once. Take them out five, six at a time, let them thaw and then eat them.
It's so simple to make these like, that's the theme here. Simple is the theme. And Gloria for this particular recipe actually uses them with chia seeds. But you can kind of mix in a lot of whatever you want to do. Even if you want to sneak some candy in there, I won't tell, I promise. But if you want to follow the Gloria’s recipe, she includes the nutrition information so you know exactly what you're making, what your macros are and how to include that in your overall diet.
Now, number four, this was a little ingenious. I was a little surprised when I saw it, it looks delicious. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on to start with. But number four, Gloria brought this to me early on, peanut butter recovery mousse. Now, if you're like me, you like to lie to yourself and say, okay, peanut butter is high in protein, we need it and it's great for recovery.
Okay, well, peanut butter sucks as far as ‘ concerned. It has good fats, a lot of fat if you're missing fats in your macros. But it’s protein content is not great as far as what we need as athletes, as runners. But Gloria to the rescue here like many a time for us with food, she's figured out how to incorporate our peanut butter and make it into something we can use for recovery.
Three pretty simple ingredients, peanut butter, cottage cheese, and chocolate protein powder. Whip these all together into a mousse, and you can use it for recovery. I actually think if you modify her recipe just a little bit, and a little bit more peanut butter to make it thicker, you can probably use this as a dip on things like apples or I guess you could put it on bananas.
But you know, take some apples or something like that, dip it in, eat it that way. That's going to be a great snack, you can pick up pretty much anytime of the day.
Number five, I left the best for last. This is the one that's most self-indulgent, and it's a recreation of the Snickers bar with raw ingredients, so it’s a raw Snickers bar. If you have a sweet tooth like me, and far be it for me to you know, deny a tiny little bone in my mouth from telling me what to do, it has control.
What can I say? It's telling me sugary things, I have to do it. Again, like I said, it's the theme with everything Glory to the rescue, she helps us figure out how to eat something that's not necessarily perfect for us a Snickers, but with much better ingredients.
She makes it with dates, raw almonds, maple syrup as our sweetener and make something that's going to be much better for us as far as micronutrients are concerned. And we eliminate all the preservatives that you might get in an actual candy bar, which is needed for you know the shelf life of that kind of product, but isn't necessarily something we want to eat all the time.
So, this one if you don't check out any of the other recipes, you absolutely have to check out this one. So, that's it, my top five picks for healthy snacks for runners who love peanut butter.
You can find all of those recipes on our blog, Solpri.com/blog and Gloria brings out a new recipe every single week. Not always a snack, sometimes a meal. But these specific recipes you can find in the description below. Just check those out, I’ll have the links directly to them.
So, what kind of snacks peanut butter snacks do you eat as a runner? What do you love? Share them with me, leave me a comment down below. I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner’s High.