39% Of People Think This Is The Tastiest Healthy Snack

Once the holidays are over and the new year looms into view, many people's thoughts turn toward a reluctant acknowledgment that they'd better do something about their crappy eating habits. Mainlining sugar from Halloween onwards, with a few brief interruptions for a few massive turkey-and-all-the-trimmings dinners... yeah, by now, Santa's probably not the only one with a belly like a bowlful of jelly.

If you want to have any chance of forming new, healthier eating patterns, it helps to find a nutritious snack you actually enjoy eating. In order to see what everyone's favorite guilt-free pleasures might be, Mashed polled YouTube subscribers and found that, by far, the largest number of respondents — 39% of the nearly 14,000 worldwide who heeded our call — chose the ever-popular smoothie. They did not, however, specify whether they preferred these with or without salad greens stuffed in amidst the fruit. (Healthier, yes, but a blender full of oobleck is not to everyone's taste.)

Smoothies are made from yogurt that's been doctored up with other stuff — some of it good for you (the aforementioned green gunk), some just there to make them taste good. Yogurt on its own, however, is usually pretty nutritious, and it was the healthy snack pick of 19% of those polled, finishing in third place behind nuts. This snack received 26% of the votes because sometimes you just feel like a nut (though sometimes you don't).

In dead last, with a mere 11% of the votes, were vegetables, since honestly, who really likes eating those plain? Maybe they meant dipped or dunked or stir-fried or some other method that actually gives them a little flavor. (Sure, loaded baked potatoes, fries, and street corn are all delicious, but it's a bit of a stretch to call any of those truly "healthy.")

We also had a number of "other" votes, 5% in all. Fruit got a few shout-outs, as did high-protein faves like hummus, deviled eggs, and beef jerky, and we even got a vote for avocado toast. (Isn't that kind of last decade?) Other respondents weren't even trying — naming Mountain Dew, Doritos, cheeseburgers, wine, etc. One commenter, however, helpfully pointed out that chocolate cake can be healthy if it's "cut in half because it's half the calories," adding, "because it's half the calories, you can have twice as much!" Well, that does have a certain logic to it... Pass the brownies, please!