7 Organic Snacks to Fix Your Hunger & the Environment
Ready to up your snack game?
Healthy organic snacks are here to fix your hunger—and the planet’s environmental crisis.
Fast food and junk food account for up to 50% of all litter in the US, along with fast food emissions estimated to make up 70% of all methane by 2050.
So, what is a healthy snacking option? And are organic snacks better?
Organic refers to the way agricultural products are grown and processed. It means they’re without the GMOs, chemicals, and pollutants that harm our health and the environment.
It often means minimally-processed, whole food snacks with higher nutrition, less fossil fuels used, and better cared for land where they originate. Yum.
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A Sample Platter Of The Best Organic Snacks
Dish up a healthy helping of the “zero waste feel good provisions” by west~bourne. Their whole food plant based snacks come with compostable packaging and carbon-neutral shipping.
And forget Red-40 (the artificial dye).
For the best organic fruit snacks, Sun & Swell offers real, dried fruit pieces, organically grown and harvested locally in California, minimizing food miles.
To chew on more info about why you should switch to organic snack foods and how we chose these brands, munch down to the bottom.
The Full List Of Healthy & Organic Snack Brands
- west~bourne | Visit Store
- Sun & Swell Foods | Visit Store
- Thrive Market | Visit Store
- Patagonia Provisions | Visit Store
- Made in Nature | Visit Store
- Nature’s Path | Visit Store
- Annie’s Organic | Visit Store
1. west~bourne
west~bourne’s Organic Healthy Snacks
Price Range: $14–$39
Delicious, healthy, plant-based snacks are what west~bourne’s tasty treats (like snack mixes and granola) are all about.
In terms of organic, non-GMO snacks, fans agree the savory Togarashi Crunch with its espelette pepper, dehydrated citrus peel, and ginger is the perfect snack, replacing any potato chip craving.
However, after sampling some of their offerings, our taste buds crave the Spiced Goji Berry Crunch, a dried fruit, nut, and rice square snack that strikes the perfect balance of salty and cinnamon sweet.
With only coconut oil in use, there are no toxic seed oils in sight (or taste!).
In addition to no nasties, it contains nutrient-rich superfoods like all-organic pecans, mulberries, and goji berries.
west~bourne’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
west~bourne is a west-born California-based organic business that is female owned and operated.
They’re not just a healthy snack brand, either. They also carry an array of pantry staples (like avocado oil) and baking mixes.
Everything is vegan and ethically sourced to nurture soil health and increase biodiversity.
The brand believes that the vessel the product comes in is of equal importance, so everything is packaged in forward-thinking materials like 100% backyard compostable plant-resin pouches, carbon-friendly glass jars, and recyclable bottles with plant-based dissolvable labels.
All shipping is carbon neutralized by giving back to projects like the Garcia River Project, a Redwood Forest preservation and management coalition.
2. Sun & Swell Foods
Sun & Swell Foods’ Vegan Organic Snacks
Price Range: $8–$198 (for 96-pack)
Sun & Swell are “on a mission to move the snack industry away from plastic.”
The organic snack brand meets this mission by offering delicious organic, green packaged snacks, thanks to compostable packaging.
Choose between trail mix, dried mango, pineapple rings, apple pie energy bites, and fudge brownie bites.
We’ve tried the full sampler and while picking a favorite is nearly impossible, being chocolate lovers, we’re drawn to the healthy Fudge Brownie Real Food Bars.
That’s right, healthy brownies… that actually taste like brownies! They contain only four organic ingredients, including dates, cashews, oats, and cacao.
Dates are naturally high on the glycemic index (and high in antioxidants), which make these bars the perfect compliment for physical activity, like taking a jog in your new sustainable running shoes.
Caring about a healthy diet and the environment comes easy with a brand like Sun & Swell, whose commitment to sustainability not only makes a difference but makes their all-natural products top-notch.
We especially love that these are artificial preservative free snacks, relying only on natural fruit sugars to keep them fresh, which is rare even among “healthy, clean” snacks.
They also have a selection of clean bulk snacks for true snack addicts—and honestly, who won’t be after trying these?!
Sun & Swell Foods’ Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Female-owned and family-operated Sun & Swell Foods is a bulk store online full of organic plant-based snacks offered at affordable prices.
You can be sure nothing undergoes heavy processing with harmful additives or refined sugar.
This California Certified B Corp’s values extend beyond their USDA organic, certified vegan products, with their noteworthy commitment towards the betterment of their community, employees, and customers.
All ingredients are organic and sourced locally in California, or as close to local as possible.
All packaging is compostable, and if you’re without access to composting, the brand has a send-back program.
Shipping is also eco-friendly via compostable tape, carbon-neutral shipping, and no ink-heavy printing or plastic inserts so that shipping materials can be composted.
The brand further gives back through their partnership with 1% For The Planet.
3. Thrive Market
Thrive Market’s Healthy, Organic Snacks Online
Price Range: Various + Subscription Fee
Need an alternative to Amazon’s Subscribe-and-Save feature?
Join 1 million+ subscribers and let your pantry thrive with Thrive Market by getting your organic snacks delivered automatically.
In addition to their convenient sustainable subscription boxes of healthy dry, canned, snack, and frozen foods delivered to your home, this online subscription service also has loads of yummy in-house organic snack options ranging from organic bars.
From organic seaweed snacks and popcorn to pumpkin seeds, trail mix, or sunflower seeds, they have a little bit of everything.
We recommend trying their Non-GMO Avocado Oil Salt & Vinegar Chips or Healthy Snack Sampler.
They also let you shop and filter items according to your personal values and preferences like diet type (vegan, gluten-free, etc), certifications and awards, health and ingredients, environmental and social concerns, and personal health concerns.
For example, if you need organic keto snacks, simply set your profile to that diet, and you’ll only see options that fit.
To sign up, you need an email address, a credit card, and $60 annually for membership, which you’ll more than save via their discounted pricing—and if you don’t, they’ll credit you the difference.
Orders usually arrive at your door in 2–3 days.
Thrive Market’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
This Certified B Corp nails it as far as sustainability, zero GMO, carbon neutrality, and giving back goes, which is why their membership program receives rave reviews online.
Thrive sells exclusively non-GMO foods with no artificial ingredients, including products verified by The Non-GMO Project and certified organic food.
More than 2,000 of their products are organic, and they keep a list of 500+ “never ingredients”, like: trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, palm oil, synthetic ingredients, and acesulfame potassium.
They also support the community through their one-for-one membership matching program, offering a free membership to a low-income family, student, veteran, first responder, or teacher for every new paying membership.
They also partner with FoodCorps to provide healthier food to kids in America and FoodCycle LA to reroute surplus food to those who need it and away from landfills.
Thrive is also proudly Carbon Neutral Certified, TRUE Certified for Zero Waste, and Plastic Neutral Certified.
4. Patagonia Provisions
Patagonia Provisions’ Healthy Non-GMO Snacks
Price Range: $5–$130
There’s no shame in snacking, and we don’t need the salty, processed foods you find in the vending machine. Snacks can be healthy AND delicious, made from responsibly produced ingredients, free of artificial colors, artificial flavors, or GMOs.
Patagonia Provisions is here to make snacking easy and nutritious with their wide range of organic snacks that are perfect for home, work, school, the trails, or wherever your hunger strikes.
Patagonia Provision’s organic treats are divided into three equally popular categories: dried fruits, nut and snack mixes (Chili Mango? Um, yes please!), and, for the non-vegans looking for high protein whole food snacks, cured meats.
For those concerned about the ethics and impact of animal-based foods, theirs meet top standards. For example, their venison links come from invasive axis deer on Maui, whose appetites threaten the entire island’s ecosystem.
All meats are either wild caught or harvested, or free-range (and never fed growth hormones), while everything else is GMO-free and the result of regenerative agriculture.
Patagonia Provisions’ Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Hailing from sustainable outdoor clothing heavy-weights Patagonia, their Provisions offshoots trades gear for the best non-GMO snacks without preservatives and synthetic additives.
The brand’s supply chains make a less detrimental impact by drawing down carbon, restoring topsoil, and repairing biodiversity.
A 1% for the Planet member, PP donates all sales to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment.
When you purchase a product from PP, you help grow the demand for regenerative foods, which is a crucial step toward revitalizing our home planet.
“Use business to protect nature” has long been their mission at Patagonia, which has earned them consistently the top-slot as a Certified B Corp force of good.
5. Made in Nature
Made in Nature’s Organic Snacks
Price Range: $13–$30
Whether you need an energy-packed pick-me-up, some salty satisfaction, or a nutritious sweet tooth craving fulfilled, Made in Nature’s super snacks are the organic answer to all your snacking needs.
Their entire clean snack range is free from GMOs, sulfur, additives or preservatives.
If you’re looking for a whole food snacks ideas, we’ve been fans of their dried fruits (the dried Smyrna figs especially) for years—both for its affordable price compared to other dried specialty super fruits, and for the fact that it has zero sulfur dioxide, which makes a mockery of Mother Nature by unnaturally keeping fruit color and chemically drying it.
While dried fruit can seem like a blasé snack for some, these are truly game-changers: organic nature is so on point that the real fruit will electrify your taste buds.
Their renowned Figgy Pops protein bars in a variety of flavors, the fruits, seeds, nuts, and spices collide to create the perfect nut energy bites.
Best of all, because they don’t taste as healthy as they are, they’re some of the best organic kid snacks around.
Made In Nature’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Made in Nature is a pioneer in the gluten-free and organic snack game, with more than thirty years of providing consumers “ferociously flavorful organic supersnacks”.
All products are made in California, USDA certified organic, certified gluten-free, non-GMO verified, 100% plant-based, and with zero sulfur, additives, or preservatives.
Made in Nature has supported organic farming and Fair Trade long before it was en vogue:
“We’ve got more to show for our efforts than just crazy farmer tans. We’ve enabled farmers around the world to convert thousands of acres to organic farming.”
All organic ingredients are sourced from Turkey, Costa Rica, Mexico, Tunisia, and the US.
In the future, we’d love to see them swap plastic #7 bags for more green packaged snacks.
6. Nature’s Path
Nature’s Path’s Organic Food Snacks
Price Range: $3–$130
What is the healthiest popular snack?
Granola!
Become a granola yourself and follow the path of nature with Nature’s Path’s extensive line of delicious and nutritious granola and other grain-based foods.
The Pumpkin Seed + Flax Granola is our all-time favorite. We’ve been eating it for years and never fail to get excited about our morning parfait because of it.
Our favorite part is that these granolas are subtly sweet (not overpowering like so many others), hearty, and crunchy. No soggy and disintegrating cereal mush to see here, folks!
We love it so much, we typically buy it in their 15 pound bulk organic snack boxes. Some grocery stores stock it in their bulk section, too, so if you’re lucky enough to have one, you can eliminate the plastic bag and box by buying it there.
If we’re in the mood for a sweet treat, we pop one in of their Frosted Toaster Pastries, which trade high-fructose corn syrup and enriched bleached white flour for cane syrup and whole wheat flour.
Nature’s Path’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
One of the oldest organic snack companies around, Nature’s Path was family-established in Vancouver, Canada decades ago and now stands as North America’s largest certified organic snack food company with more than 150 products that include cold cereals, granola, waffles, hot oatmeal, bars, and cookies.
Nature’s Path products were the very first USDA-certified organic cereals on the market.
They continue to keep organic advocacy at the forefront of their mission, converting acres of farmland to organic and now adding Regenerative Organic Certified to their gamut of sustainable sourcing efforts.
Their manufacturing facilities likewise care about sustainability, with all three locations now certified zero waste.
To give back, the company donates to countless causes in support of youth and environmental education, hunger relief, endangered species and habitat restoration, and more.
7. Annie’s Organic
Annie’s Organic Clean Snacks
Price Range: $3–$65
Annie’s offers a wide range of yummy organic snacks for adults and kids alike, like crackers, snack bars, fruit snacks, frozen snacks, grahams and cookies, puffs, snack mixes, and snack packs.
They’re all drool-worthy popular for snack time or school lunches.
Looking for organic snacks for toddlers who love Goldfish?
Try Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies instead, with organic cheddar cheese instead of “cheese product” (because what even is that?!).
In fact, they have a healthier alternative for most big-name snacks, each one featuring things like organic wheat flour and organic expeller-pressed sunflower oil, instead of highly processed sunflower seed oil.
All ingredients are sustainably sourced, and while they do use palm oil sometimes, it’s organic certified.
90% of packaging is recyclable or compostable, and 100% carries the How2Recycle label to choose the right bin with ease.
Annie’s Organic Ethical & Sustainability Practices
More than thirty years ago, Annie Withey began Annie’s Organic with a belief that a successful business can also be socially conscious.
All products are Fair Trade certified, USDA organic certified, and Non-GMO verified.
While the brand was purchased by General Mills five years ago, Annie’s remains fierce in its collective commitment to mission: driving positive outcomes for the people, planet, and profit.
Sure, it can be eyebrow raising to see small brands with soul get absorbed into giant corporations, but given GM’s own recent sustainability progress, we’re choosing to believe Annie’s success will influence their parent for the better.
Annie’s also supports The Rodale Institute, who are leaders in promoting regenerative organic agriculture.
Annie’s also leads a series of environmental projects, like supporting organic conversion, advancing carbon farming, and developing more sustainable cereal box liners.
In the past five years, Annie’s has contributed almost four million dollars to support these programs.
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Why Choose Healthy & Whole Food Snacks?
The industrial approach to food is one that is rife with pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, ionizing radiation, and GMOs… which are all linked to food insecurity, inequality, obesity, diabetes, depression and more.
Walk down any grocery store aisle nowadays, and food doesn’t really even look like food anymore.
The truth about most supermarket snack aisles is that they not only contribute to huge amounts of landfill waste and plastic pollution, but they’re also terrible for our health, with options chock-full of modified ingredients, chemically-processed seed oils, and high fructose corn syrup.
While these processed snacks can taste delicious, the impact of snack culture isn’t just the obesity epidemic, diabetes, and heart problems, but also a massive carbon footprint on the planet.
That’s because the energy used to process, preserve, produce, package and ship snack foods is far greater than what it takes to produce food staples.
Global food supply as a whole contributes 26% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s why sustainable food systems and sustainable food brands—of which whole food, healthy snacks are a critical component in our snack-happy culture—are more crucial now than ever.
How We Chose The Best Whole Food Snacks
Organic farming—better yet, regenerative organic farming—is a holistic approach to producing food that is healthy for both humans and the planet.
By choosing high quality organic products, we’re voting with your dollars to transform social injustice, unsustainable food systems, and climate change into a new approach helping heal the planet, respect farmers and animals, and in turn, protecting our own bodies and health.
The following are measures of success in terms of what makes a snack organic.
Ingredients & Sourcing:
Above all else, we look for organic, whole, healthy, and non-GMO snacks made with some of the most sustainable foods.
Beyond that, we love to see when ingredients are locally grown, grown using regenerative practices, and support ethical treatment of farmers.
While we’re not all vegans, we tend to look for organic vegan snacks with plant-based protein due to the hefty impact of animal agriculture and ethical issues), but if we do consider non-vegan clean protein snacks, it’s for things like ethically harvested honey or wild-caught or free-range animal meat.
Green Snack Packaging:
Ideally it’s zero waste (compostable) or at the very least recycled/reusable/recyclable.
From packaging to shipping, we want brands that take packaging waste as seriously as the organic ingredients inside the package.
Carbon Commitments & Green Practices:
Here, we’re talking carbon offset programs, renewable energy, localized production, or anything a brand does to further reduce their carbon footprint.
Community & Charitable Giving:
While we understand that some brands are too small to give back (yet), we like when profits are piped back to people and the planet.
Final Thoughts On Healthy Clean Eating Snacks
When it comes to clean eating, healthy snacks are an essential component.
We all crave junk from time to time—but contrary to the name, it doesn’t actually have to be junk if we’re eating whole and organic junk food.
If you’ve got a hankering for something better for Mother Earth and your health, this list of non-GMO snacks will fuel your hunger needs—while likewise nourishing the planet.
Making the choice to fill your grocery basket and safest food storage containers with clean snacks is a vote for a better planet and better human health.
The next time family and friends ask “Are organic snacks better?” you can reply a resounding “YES!” and share this article.
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