Snack attack: Reaching for treats between meals could lead to health issues

We’ve turned into a nation of snackers with a preference for foods high in sugar and fat. Dietitians warn it puts us at risk of developing obesity and other serious health issues

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The way we eat is changing. The Ireland of the 1980s and 1990s was a country where people ate three meals a day and snacks and treats were a rarity. The opposite is true today with many of us moving from regular meals to grazing all day long.

Many of us have a quick breakfast followed by an energy boost from a protein ball mid-morning. Lunch is often eaten on the go followed by a mid-afternoon treat. Then there’s dinner and maybe some chocolate or popcorn in front of the latest boxset in the evening.

Is this cause for concern? Could all this snacking be impacting our health?

Dietitian Sarah Keogh, from Eat Well Clinic in Dublin, has certainly noticed the trend. “When I started as a dietitian 25 years ago, nobody really snacked between meals,” she says. “Now I see patients who snack up to five or six times a day. The increase is enormous.”

The research backs her up. A 2019 Mintel report on consumer snacking habits in Ireland found that just 16% of us stick to three meals a day, while 58% routinely snack twice or three times daily. The younger you are, the more likely you are to snack. That same report showed that 43% of over 65s ate at mealtimes only, while this was true of only 24% of those aged under 65.

What’s most concerning is the type of food we’re choosing as snacks. A 2018 healthy snacking report by Bord Bia found that crisps were the snack of choice for 22% of people, biscuits for 19%, chocolate for 16%, fresh fruit for 13%, and cake for 10%. The remaining 20% consumed snacks such as protein balls, dried fruit, popcorn, fresh vegetable snacks, granola bars, vegetable-based dried snacks, rice cakes, and seeds.

Most of our snacks are processed foods. In 2021, Bord Bia found that the Irish snacking market was worth €3.58bn while the global snack food market was valued at $427.02bn (or €374.6bn).

Grab and go

With snacking now firmly established as part of the way we eat, it may come as a surprise to realise that this wasn’t always the case. According to Professor Harry M Popkin of the Gilling’s School of Public Health in North Carolina, snacking is a recent phenomenon. “Before 1970, there was very little snacking,” he says. “Tea, coffee, and water were consumed between meals, but not food. The things we think of as snack foods today, the pre-prepared foods that dominate most of our supermarket shelves, simply didn’t exist.”

He believes several factors are driving this change in eating habits. “It’s a combination of incomes going up and people’s lifestyles becoming busier,” he says. “People have less time to prepare and eat food. Food businesses have recognised an opportunity here and with improvements in food science prolonging the shelf life of food, they have been able to increase their range of snack foods. Add in modern marketing and the overall effect is that we are snacking more.”

Dr Dan McCartney, programme director in nutrition and dietetics at the Technological University Dublin, agrees with this analysis. “Time is the enemy in terms of the way we eat today,” he says. “We’re asked to do so much more in our professional and personal lives that it’s hard to find the time to prepare and eat food. So, we grab something convenient whenever we’re hungry.”

There’s our always-on culture to consider too. We’re constantly stimulated and instantly gratified, with music, movies, and information at our fingertips,requiring little to no effort to access. Why shouldn’t food be the same?

Keogh believes that this ties in with us being surrounded by more food, which stimulates our appetites. “That food wasn’t there 30 years ago,” she says. “But now, it’s everywhere. There are so many places we can pick up a coffee and a pastry, crisps, or a chocolate bar. When we see food, it triggers the desire to eat. If we didn’t see it, we wouldn’t think about it unless we were hungry.”

We’re consuming more calories

This increase in snacking, combined with the nature of the foods we are choosing to snack on, means we are consuming more daily calories. A review of food habits led by Popkin found that in the late 1970s children in the US consumed about 244 calories as snacks. By the mid-2000s, this had more than doubled to 496 calories.

“We see this all over the world,” he says. “We’re consuming more calories because we’re snacking more outside meals. It’s one of the reasons obesity levels have tripled globally since the 1970s.”

McCartney is particularly worried about the quality of the food we’re snacking on. “My issue is not the pattern of consumption but what we tend to eat in terms of readily available snacks,” he says. “It’s not fresh fruit and vegetables it’s foods that are high in fat, sugar, and salt. These foods are easier for retailers to stock because they have a long shelf life, but typically they are foods that have a high sugar, high fat, and high salt content. Over time, they can adversely affect our health, contributing to weight gain, high blood lipids, and high blood pressure and potentially leading to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.”

He is especially concerned about this effect on children, particularly as snacks are often given as a reward for good behaviour or a distraction from bad behaviour.

“It’s fine for children to snack as long as they snack on appropriate food,” he says. “The habits of a lifetime are laid down in childhood and if they are allowed to snack on high fat, sugar, and salty foods, they may lay down damaging habits.”

This is why there is an ongoing campaign to ban the advertising of junk food to children. Safefood Ireland, the public body responsible for raising consumer awareness of issues relating to food safety and healthy eating, supports this campaign. “There is indisputable evidence that overweight and obesity in children is influenced by the marketing of foods and drinks that are high in fat, sugar, and salt,” says Joana da Silva, chief specialist in nutrition at Safefood. “The World Health Organisation had a commission on ending childhood obesity in 2016 and a core recommendation was to reduce children’s exposure to all such marketing.”

da Silva worries for children’s health if current trends continue. “We’re concerned about unhealthy foods displacing healthier foods from children’s diets,” she says. “Research we carried out in 2021 found that treat foods are now the second most consumed food group by children, with almost 20% of calories being provided by foods like biscuits, cakes, pastries, crisps, and sugary drinks.”

Safefood would like to see measures taken to change children’s — and adults’ — eating habits for the better. “Examples would include the work being done in reformulating processed foods to be lower in fat, sugar, and calories,” says da Silva. “There’s also the recent Sugar Sweetened Drinks Tax and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s voluntary code on advertising to children.”

Opting for healthy snacks

Eating little and often could well be beneficial for some people.

“You can reach your nutritional requirements either way and there can be advantages to both,” says McCartney. “By eating meals and no snacks, you are less likely to consume snack products that lead to weight gain and other health problems. But if you snack healthily, you might enhance your nutritional intake.

“Some studies show that a grazing pattern of healthy snacks is better for blood glucose control while there is also evidence that intermittent fasting recalibrates our metabolic system and slows the ageing process. You could argue for both, but what doesn’t change is the importance of eating high-quality food.”

Keogh takes a similar view. “Whether you need snacks depends on your lifestyle,” she says. “You might need them if you’re especially active or if you have to go a long time between meals. Thirty years ago, we all had our dinners at six o’clock but circumstances are different today. By the time we get home, it might be eight o’clock before we get dinner on the table. If we haven’t eaten since lunchtime, we probably need a snack.”

To support healthy snacking, we need to adopt the right strategy, says McCartney. “Plan your snacks over the course of the week,” he says. “Go to the supermarket and pick up the fruits and healthy snacks you intend to eat and have those with you when you to go work or at hand in the house. This means that you’re less likely to reach for the more convenient but less healthy option when you’re hungry.”

Keogh advises asking yourself what your body needs in the moment and what natural unprocessed food might fulfil that need. “My aim is nourishment,” she says. “I might eat a yogurt for calcium, nuts for magnesium and selenium, or maybe some fruit or veg if I haven’t yet had my five a day.”

She has what she calls “the apple test” that her children must pass whenever they ask for a snack. “I offer them an apple. If they don’t want it, they’re not really hungry.”

Perhaps we should all ask ourselves a variation of this question the next time we crave a snack. As Popkin says: “In my mind, the modern marketing and related food industry sector created modern snacking. In many cases when people snack, they’re not really hungry at all.”

Good food to go

Many of us opt for foods high in fat, salt, and sugar when snacking, such as biscuits, confectionery, or crisps. But what are the best options if we want to satisfy hunger, increase our energy, or enhance our health?

• Typically made from chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, and garlic, hummus is high in protein. It will keep you full for longer and contains nutrients like fibre, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous. When buying it from the supermarket, check the sodium levels and make sure that any added ingredients are natural and healthy.
• Peanut and other nut butters are full of protein and healthy fats. Choose unsweetened versions that haven’t had any oils added for optimum health benefits. These butters should consist of nuts, a pinch of salt, and nothing else.
• Nuts and seeds are packed with healthy fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Add some dried fruit to the mix to pack an even greater nutritional punch.
• Natural yogurt or fromage frais can make a calcium-rich snack. When you add nuts, seeds, fresh fruit, or a drizzle of honey, you have a deliciously nutritious treat.
• Avocados contain vitamins K, C, B5, B6, and E, along with folate, potassium, and a host of healthy fats. Once ripe, they can be mashed with lime juice and chopped coriander, red onion, and chilli to make guacamole, a filling snack especially if served with crackers, corn cakes, or raw vegetables.
• Cereal bars or energy and protein balls can be good if you’re on the go. Make sure you read the label and avoid the ones containing a lot of sugar, choosing those made with nuts, seeds, and wholegrains instead.
• Treat yourself to some dark chocolate. Chocolate with a cocoa content of 70% or more contains a range of nutrients, including iron, magnesium, and copper as well as antioxidants and fibre. Studies have shown that it may even play a role in reducing blood pressure or helping brain function.