For snackaholics, cutting out the extra noshing between meals isn’t the cakewalk it seems.
A recent study found that American adults eat up to a meal’s worth of calories per day in snacks alone, which don’t offer much nutritional value.
Study author Christopher Taylor, a professor of medical dietetics at Ohio State University’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, recommended the introduction of “healthier snacking patterns” to avoid the extra 500 calories or so the average person consumes.
“We’ve gotten to a point of demonizing individual foods, but we have to look at the total picture,” Taylor said in a statement. “Removing added sugars won’t automatically make the vitamin C, vitamin D, phosphorus and iron better. And if we take out refined grains, we lose nutrients that come with fortification.”
In short: “the substitution becomes just as important as the removal.”
Some experts say there’s a secret weapon to make quitting junk food cold turkey a piece of cake: Fiber.
In addition to regulating blood sugar and its detoxifying properties, functional medicine clinical nutritionist Dr. Pooja Mahtani told PopSugar that it also “aids digestion by promoting regularity and preventing constipation, and it also helps you feel fuller longer.”
Rather than reaching for oily potato chips, a bag of candy or other pantry junk, experts say that artichokes, chia seeds, blueberries, mixed nuts, whole wheat crackers, chickpeas, popcorn and snacks made from avocado, like guacamole or truffles, are all high-fiber alternatives.
The recent study, however, found that Americans tend to nosh on foods with little nutritional value that are high in sugars, fats or carbohydrates, while fruits and vegetables only comprised about 5% of calories consumed in snacks.
And, as the holiday season ramps up with delectable desserts — Christmas cookies, fruit cakes, pecan pie, oh my — it’s crucial to plan ahead to fulfill nutritional needs.
“We think about what we’re going to pack for lunch and cook for dinner. But we don’t plan that way for our snacks. So then you’re at the mercy of what’s available in your environment,” Taylor said.
For the study, published last week in the journal PLOS Global Public Health, researchers looked at data from more than 23,000 Americans over the age of 30 who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which collected 24 hours of dietary data that revealed what was eaten and when.
Participants were then divided into four groups: non-diabetes, pre-diabetes, controlled diabetes and poorly controlled diabetes.
While only a day’s worth of food consumption isn’t indicative of the way people habitually eat, it could provide “a really good snapshot of a large number of people” and help experts identify “nutritional gaps” or the need for further dietary education to prevent chronic disease.
Across all four categories, snacks accounted for approximately 19% to just over 22% of total calories per day, but offered limited nutritional value.
The team found that those who controlled type 2 diabetes ate less sugary junk food and noshed between meals less frequently than those without diabetes or who were deemed pre-diabetic.
“Snacks are contributing a meal’s worth of intake to what we eat without it actually being a meal,” Taylor said.
“You know what dinner is going to be: a protein, a side dish or two. But if you eat a meal of what you eat for snacks, it becomes a completely different scenario of, generally, carbohydrates, sugars, not much protein, not much fruit, not a vegetable.”
