Is Snacking Making You Fat?

Is it better to eat three substantial meals a day or to graze your way through a selection of smaller meals and snacks? Nutritionist Angela Dowden investigates.

- Angela Dowden

While our grandmothers served up three meals and frowned on eating in between, for today’s generation, snacking has become a way of life – not just seen as practical and convenient, but actually promoted as being better for our waistline and health. UK stats are hard to come by, but, in America – where snacking habits closely mirror our own – the average number of eating occasions went up 29 per cent between the mid- 1970s and the mid-noughties. That’s an increase from 3.8 to 4.9 meals and snacks a day – and it’s likely to be even higher now. The tide is turning against snacking, though – research shows our bodies may be designed to go for periods without food – the theory behind the many intermittent fasting and 5:2-style eating regimens that are so popular now. According to this emerging research, the body is better able to turn its attention to the repair and maintenance of body cells during a period of fasting, as energies are not diverted into digesting and processing food.

So could our snacking have gone too far? Dietitian Dr Sarah Schenker, co author of The Ageless Body (Bloomsbury Sport, £8.99) thinks so. ‘The food industry has sent a message that it is a bad thing to be hungry, which has allowed them to develop and build a huge category of food on the go,’ she says. ‘However, I’m of the opinion that feeling hungry between meals is normal and healthy, and that we are meant to just tolerate the feeling until it’s time to eat.’

On the other hand, British Dietetic Association spokesperson Helen Bond believes appropriate snacking can be beneficial and that it all depends on what snacks you eat. ‘If people choose carefully and plan ahead, snacking can be part of a healthy diet, and a great way to top up on nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, fibre and protein,’ she says.