Healthy Eating: Give A Healthy Eating Gift Basket

Give your health-nut friend the ultimate gift: a healthy foods gift basket. Inspire yourself with these great ideas.

We all have that healthy friend who makes the rest of us feel bad by ordering a salad when the rest of the group is ordering double cheeseburgers, fries and shakes. They go jogging every single morning while we lie in bed hitting the snooze button for the 6th time. Their birthday is coming up and instead of buying them a gift certificate to the local hamburger joint, like you may want to, rejoice in their newfound health and let them know you care by creating the ultimate healthy gift basket. There is no shortage in the market of healthy food items to include, so here are a few suggestions that you may want to mix and match to create your own inspired gift basket.

Fresh Fruits

You can never go wrong with fresh fruits. These will go great at the bottom of the basket as filler, so make sure to include fruits that do not bruise easily. This means no peaches and probably no bananas. Hearty, solid fruits like apples and oranges are perfect in this capacity. You may even want to include a few exotic fruits like kumquats, pomegranates and star fruits, if they are in season.

Nuts

Go to your local health store and buy several different nuts in bulk. Some nuts to choose from are pistachios, brazil nuts, cashews, walnuts, peanuts and pecans. A quarter pound of each will do, since nuts are healthy, but best when limited to a handful. Purchase some fancy gauze and ribbon at a crafts store and wrap up each set of nuts in different packages. Use the ribbon to tie the packages. You can get some natural looking paper and make tags on each package so the gift recipient knows what kind of nuts are inside.

Sweets

Go to your local grocery store or health food store and you will be overwhelmed at the number of low-fat or no-fat sweet snacks they offer. It may even inspire you to go the healthy way. Get a box each of low-fat cookies like ginger snaps, jelly beans (which have little to no fat), low-fat vanilla wafers, low-fat pudding cups and low-carbohydrate chocolate bars.

Breakfast Foods

Put a sampling of healthy breakfast foods in the basket like quick-cooking Irish oatmeal or low-fat scone mixes. You can also put a box of granola or, for a more personal touch, a bag of homemade granola. You can find hundreds of recipes for homemade granola online. Teas like English Breakfast or Earl Grey are perfect for the healthy eater. Put the teas inside a tea cup that you hand pick.

Salty Foods and Other Items

Organic popcorn is a delicious and definite must for a healthy gift basket. You can also put in a box of low-fat gourmet crackers and maybe a can of smoked salmon. If you like, you can put a gift card in the basket to be used at a local sports store or for the health store where you made most of your purchases. Another great idea is to include a cookbook for healthy dinners or lunches. Put all of your purchases in a large wicker basket and tie a bow around the handle for a final touch. Your healthy friend is sure to love this thoughtful gift.

© Demand Media 2011