Somewhere, secreted in the It bags and desk draws of the chic and glamorous, you will find the evidence: a linseed or two in gathered in the lint by the house keys; a half-eaten packet of edamame beans or sriracha peas nestled by the stapler; a lone cashew nut under a notebook.
They are the survival fuel for the grazing generation, essential for firing up energy levels, preventing blood sugar from dipping to a debilitating low and, of course, for avoiding temptation when it comes to the snack machine. Without them, everything would suffer: our attention span, our workouts, even our health.
Micro-meals are now so ingrained in our lifestyles that we think we can’t live without them. Some employers striving to keep staff happy and productive offer free snacks in the workplace — granola bars and smoothies are increasingly provided in office kitchenettes — while high-flying executives are put through “energy for performance” courses on which they are encouraged to drip-feed their brainpower throughout the day with regular nibbles.
Snacks are recommended by personal trainers to boost exercise performance and recovery, by nutritionists to avoid weight gain and by paleo enthusiasts who munch on everything from pork crackling to macadamia bars in an attempt to keep energised on a diet that restricts grains, dairy and processed foods.
What constitutes a snack has changed beyond all recognition — it’s no longer just a Mars a day that’s helping you to work rest and play.
Our snacking preferences have become more refined — for instance, crisp consumption is in steady decline, dropping by almost 2 per cent in the past year — but we’re packing away more snacks than ever. A report on the snacking market by the market analyst Key Note, meanwhile, predicts that snacks sales will rise by 30.5 per cent in the five years to 2018, as we indulge in supposedly healthy stopgaps such as pitta chips, kale crisps and gourmet popcorn.
Although the grazing generation shows no sign of slacking, there is a growing backlash against it, an anti-snacking movement that claims there are scientific reasons for why we should cut down on eating between meals. Grazing became popular in the 1990s when studies suggested that eating little and often was best for the body. Large meals, we were told, served only to burden the digestive system, causing bloating and lowering energy as the body struggles to process them.
Eating three square meals a day would cause a sluggish metabolism, slow down the rate at which we could shed surplus pounds and lead to hours when, without food, our blood sugar and energy levels would drop. As a result, we became snack-obsessed and the food industry fuelled our desire to eat on the run with endless new mini-meal sized pre-packaged products in supermarkets, coffee shops and juice bars. It marked a move towards incessant eating that the nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker, who speaks forthe British Dietetic Association, says has proven to be our undoing.
“We are perpetually fed this line by the food industry that we should never allow ourselves to get hungry and are lead to believe that hunger is dangerous to our health,” she says.
“It’s a myth and there’s absolutely no truth in it at all.”
We get the urge to snack less as a result of a natural, internal response to energy deficit, researchers have shown, than from a conditioned response: having snacks on such constant supply makes us think we need them. According to Schenker, by constantly topping up our energy levels we are effectively throwing a spanner into the works when it comes to avoiding weight gain.
“It used to be thought that grazing keeps up your metabolism because of the energy needed to digest food in the body,” she says. “The problem is that the calories in snacks far outweigh the small increase in calories burnt through eating.” In short, we consume more than we use up, the inevitable outcome being weight-gain.
Scientifically at least, the justification for snacking is looking less defensible. Last year, researchers from the Netherlands reported in the journal Hepatology that, compared with three large meals a day, frequent snacks were more likely to cause cholesterol stores in the liver to rise along with the accumulation of harmful fat around the waist.
Dr Mireille Serlie, who lead the trial at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, said her findings clearly suggested “that by cutting down on snacking and encouraging three balanced meals each day over the long term may reduce the prevalence of non-fatty liver disease”.
Meanwhile, findings by scientists in the Czech Republic suggest that two hearty meals a day achieve far better blood-sugar control for people with type 2 diabetes than constant nibbling on six daily mini-meals. All volunteers in the 12-week study lost weight. Yet the findings, published in Diabetologia, showed that those eating twice a day lost about half a stone (3.7kg), compared with just over a third of a stone (2.3kg) for the snackers.
Schenker says this is not surprising. “Constant snacking means your blood sugar levels are changing and insulin is released because you are not allowing your body to enter a catabolic state by running down energy stores,” she explains. “Insulin promotes fat storage and inhibits fat breakdown. The more of it is released, the more difficult it is to achieve weight loss.”
Even the case for snacks as brain-fuel has been thrown into doubt. In 2011, Professor Andrew Smith, of Cardiff University’s school of psychology, reported in a study that, although frequent snacking had few negative effects on cognitive performance, it “appears to have few long term mental-health benefits” either. At Tufts University in the US, a team of researchers found that while a mid-afternoon snack helped children perform better in memory tests, it didn’t enhance their attention span or focus. In fact, a placebo worked better.
Start digging and there’s little in the way of convincing evidence that micro-meals are beneficial, either for body or mind, a summation reached in a review conducted by British Nutrition Foundation scientists for their own journal, Nutrition Bulletin, in 2013. It concluded that despite many years of scientific interest in the effects of snacking, “the lack of consistency in study design and snacking definitions and the array of potential confounding factors (eg, physical activity levels) makes interpretation of findings difficult’’. In other words, it’s hard to pin down any proof that the grazing generation has got it right.
Schenker is adamant they have not. “We don’t need constant fuel to perform at our best. It’s perfectly normal and healthy to be hungry.”
From quiona chips to yoghurt pots we give our health ratings
CRISPS
Kale crisps (per 15g pack) calories 67, carbs 5.2g (1.2g sugars), salt 0.3g Rating 5 stars
Eat Real Quinoa Chips Sour Cream & Chive (30g bag) calories 165, carbs 19.9g (0.9 g sugars), salt 0.6g Rating 4 stars
Walkers ready salted crisps (per 32.5g pack) calories 171 carbs, 16.7g (0.1g sugars), salt 0.46g Rating 2 stars
Propercorn sea salt and brown sugar popcorn (per pack) calories 129, carbs 19.3g (8.4g sugars), salt 0.15g Rating 1 star
Tyrrells Veg Crisps (per 40g back) calories 197, carbs 15.0g (9.0g sugars), salt 0.5g Rating 1 star
TRAIL MIXES
Food Doctor Raw Seed and Nut Mix (per 25g serving) calories 153, carbs 3.3g (0.8g sugars), salt 0g Rating 5 stars
Plain cashews (per 28g serving) calories 155, carbs 9g (2g sugars), salt 0.03g Rating 5 stars
Graze Natural Vanilla Seeds (per 31g pack) calories 163, carbs 11g (9.3g sugars), salt 0g Rating 2 stars
Eat Honey and Chilli Nuts (per 100g) calories 496, carbs 44.4g (31.0g sugars), salt 0g Rating 2 stars
Nakd Coconut Bliss Fruit and Nut Nibbles (per 40g) calories 141, carbs 21.7g (19.3g sugars), salt 0g Rating 1 star
BREAKFAST SNACKS
Pret Dairy-Free Coconut Yoghurt Pot (per 109g serving) calories 269, carbs 4.5g (2.2g sugars), salt 0g Rating 4 stars
Moma Bircher Muesli Mango & Passion Fruit (per 100g serving) calories 140, carbs 24.9g (12.1g), salt 0.1g Rating 3
Quaker Oats So Simple Original porridge (per 50g) calories 190, carbs 30.3g (11.2g sugars), salt 0.11g Rating 3 stars
Rachel’s Low Fat Yoghurt and Granola (per 100g) calories 125, carbs 19.5g (14.3g sugars), salt 0.2g Rating 1 star
Starbucks almond croissant calories 525, carbs 63.1g (36.1g sugars), salt 1.21g Rating 0 stars
FRESH FRUIT
Pret Superfruit Salad (per 180g serving) calories 106, carbs 21.8g (21.1g sugars), salt 0g Rating 5 stars
Banana (per 100g) calories 89, carbs 23g (sugars 12g), salt 0.01g Rating 4 stars
Nature’s Finest mango chunks (per 125g serving) calories 70, carbs 15.4g (15.3g sugars), salt 0g Rating 3 stars
Waitrose Fresh Coconut Chunks (per 90g pack) calories 354, carbs 13.7g (5.6g sugars), salt 0.05g Rating 3 stars
Graze Rhubarb and Pear Compote (per 35g) calories 115, carbs 28g (20g sugars), salt 0.02g Rating 1 star
BISCUITS AND BARS
Nairns Dark Chocolate Chip Oat Biscuits (per biscuit) calories 45, carbs 6.4g (1.9g sugars), salt 0.78g Rating 5 stars
Penguin (per bar) calories 130, carbs 15.6g (10g sugars), salt 0.06g Rating 4 stars
Trek Banana Bread Flapjack (per 50g) calories 208, carbs 19.7g (12.3g sugars), salt 0.5g Rating 3 stars
Graze Honeycomb Flapjack (per 53g) calories 241, carbs 29g (16g sugars), salt 0.31g Rating 2 stars
Tesco Finest Ecuadorian Dark Chocolate Cookie (per 65g cookie) calories 290, carbs 41.1g (24.0g sugars), salt 0.2g Rating 0 stars
CAKES AND MUFFINS
Mr Kipling Angel Slice (per 33g) calories 147, carbs 19.6g (13.2g sugars), salt 0.19g Rating 4 stars
M&S fruit scone calories 314, carbs 45.9g (16.4g sugars), salt 1.15g Rating 2
Sainsbury’s Lemon & Pistachio Mini Loaf Cake calories 224, carbs 32g (22.9g sugars), salt 0.29g Rating 1 star
Costa Blueberry Muffin calories 452, carbs 55.5g (31.9g sugars), salt 0.03g Rating 0 stars
Caffè Nero Belgian Chocolate Brownie calories 324, carbs 31.4g (26.9g), salt 0.2g Rating 0 stars
