More people nibbling their way through the day

MORE people are nibbling their way through the day, a new survey shows.

Europeans now eat more than four times a day, on average, with snacking accounting for 40% of all eating occasions.

Although main meals are still eaten more frequently than snacks, the boundary line will continue to blur into the future.

Datamonitor, the London-based business information company which conducted the survey, said the breakdown of the nuclear family was mostly to blame for the dissolution of set mealtimes.

Consumers were living more individualised lives and the pressure and desire to achieve more and do more with spare time was also rising.

“In such a situation something had to give, and for many consumers that means less structured meals and more snacking,” said Dominik Nosalik, Datamonitor’s consumer analyst.

Eating more meals was also a way of coping with insubstantial portions at mealtimes. It also indicated that there was less time for traditionally prepared and eaten meals.

“Consumption is increasingly being made to fit around the needs and lifestyles of people, rather than people fitting their lives around structured mealtimes,” he said.

With snacking now so strongly ingrained in consumers’ eating habits there was an opportunity to position snacking as a regular and positive part of their daily nutritional intake.

However, Mr Nosalik believes manufacturers and retailers must also meet consumers’ demands for healthier snacking and develop new meal-snack hybrids.

He also pointed out that promoting positive snacking to children needed to be finely balanced and done with the right type of snack foods.

Meanwhile, the Green Party, is stepping up its campaign to combat child obesity, insisting that radical measures are necessary to tackle the problem.

In particular, the party wants the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland to recommend a blanket ban on advertising junk food to children under 12 years.

Green Party chairman and health spokesperson John Gormley, who yesterday launched the party’s Combating Child Obesity policy, said there should be, at the very least, a restriction on food products with a sugar content that was higher than the recommended level.