Foods That Promote Healthful Sleep

Eating at night, if done healthfully, can help satisfy your late-night craving and offer some other benefits as well. For example, eating healthy protein at night can help you build muscle while you sleep. And eating carbs with low-glycemic indices can help you control your blood sugar the next day and may also help you regulate your appetite. Read on to find out what snacks are OK to eat at night. Sorry, but pizza, chicken wings and potato chips didn’t make the list.

Dark chocolate. Once seen as a forbidden food, chocolate is making a comeback, but not all chocolate is created equal. There is a big nutritional difference between the average convenience store chocolate candy bar and cacao-rich dark chocolate. The dark chocolate lacks the added sugar of traditional chocolate and instead powers your body with magnesium, antioxidants that lower blood pressure, improve insulin sensitivity and fight inflammation. Not only that, the flavonoids in dark chocolate are known to improve mood. An ounce of your favorite dark chocolate may be just what you need to wind down at night.

Pumpkin seeds. The mark of a good nighttime snack is that it satisfies your craving while at the same time helping you to relax. Pumpkin seeds do both of those things. Their slight saltiness curbs your craving for a salty snack and the magnesium (one serving of pumpkin seeds contains almost 50 percent of the recommended daily intake of magnesium) has relaxing properties, helping you to unwind at night. A quarter-cup of roasted pumpkin seeds contains a fraction of the fat, salt and calories of regular potato chips.

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