My New Favorite Healthy HS Friendly Snack

I personally love anything I can eat that’s quick and easy. Unfortunately, a lot of fast and easy food items are not the best for my HS and might cause me outbreaks.

It’s no secret that dairy, red meat, preservatives, processed sugars and fats, alcohol, nightshades, and gluten might potentially trigger someone’s HS (We’re all different. Don’t forget). Sadly, those things make up a lot of the quick and easy options you can get at a grocery store.

Guilt-free snacking

This is where my new favorite HS friendly snack comes in.

Drum roll please…

Fruit!

Yes, fruit! You read me right!

Fruit is my new favorite thing and the best part is that I feel completely guiltless after having it. As a snack or breakfast, it fills me up and keeps me going.

Junk food as a Hidradenitis Suppurativa trigger

Growing up, fruit was a staple in my house. We never really had chips and we would have cookies sometimes, but fruit was always a constant. You could open the refrigerator and there would be any fruit you could think of cut up by my mom and ready to go.

Watermelon, peaches, apples, strawberries, blueberries, pears, kiwis, bananas…the gang was all there.

But the second I was on my own and away at school for college, I went junk food crazy. Maybe it was because I never really had a lot of it growing up or maybe it was because the convenience store was located in my dorm and accepted “Board Bucks” (AKA money you got every year to spend on snacks and stuff on campus), but whatever the case, I was in a junk food frenzy.

There was nothing easier than going down to the convenience store (We called it the C-store.) in your PJs, buying a bag of chips, microwavable mac and cheese, and a bottle of soda.

The “freshman 15” was no myth to me!

But anyway, I was constantly having things I shouldn’t have been like chips, ice cream, cookies, and frozen microwaveable pasta and pizza. I definitely had that refined “college palate.” At the time, I had no idea these things could be causing me what I thought were in-grown hairs/acne at the time.

Well now at 28, if I tried to eat all that junk, I know my HS would go extremely haywire! So I’ve been trying to avoid those potential triggers and have a lot of fruit instead. And it is delicious and so quick and easy!

The convenience of frozen fruit

I love getting pre-cut frozen fruit because it is so easy to snack on: pineapple, mangoes, peaches, blueberries, bananas! I love it all frozen! To me when I have it frozen, biting into it sorta reminds me of a sorbet! Especially with the mangoes!

And frozen fruit doesn’t lose much nutrients because they freeze it so fast so you can feel just as good about eating it as if it was the fresh stuff.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I saw someone online make a mock sour candy using frozen grapes! They froze green grapes and squeezed a lime over them and it’s supposed to taste like sour candy!

If I’m having an HS groin flare and it hurts to stand, it is so fast and easy just putting some frozen fruit in a bowl and eating it like it was sorbet. If you’re feeling fancy, you can even blend up the fruit to make it into a sorbet or as a smoothie if you add a liquid base!

HS snacks can be yummy too

Just because we have HS doesn’t mean we can’t have yummy and easy snacks!

PS: And for those of you that are okay with spicy food and nightshades, sprinkle some Tajín on your mangoes and mandarins. You won't regret it!