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We are often told not to eat between meals, and there is a general perception that snacking is unhealthy. But as usual when it comes to food, temptation prevails.
Snacking is very common, and it is becoming more frequent. In the early 1970s, for example, American adults consumed about 18 percent of their total calories in the form of snacks. By 2010, it had rose to 23 percent. Similar figures have been recorded in Great Britain, Brazil and Norway.
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Considering how common the snack is, it would be nice to know if the received wisdom is true. But research into the health effects of snacking has yielded results for a dog’s dinner. Some studies have shown that, as expected, snacking has negative health consequences. But others have found the opposite.
To get a clearer picture, earlier this year, Sarah Berry at King’s College London, who is also the chief scientist of the Zoe nutrition app, and her colleagues, reanalyzed data they had been collected as part of an experiment conducted in 2018 and 2019, in which about 850 participants recorded everything they ate and when they ate it over two to four days. They were also tested on a range of measures of cardiovascular health, such as levels of blood fats and glucose.