SNACKING is good for you if you eat more nutritious foods, a study shows.
The popular habit is also not bad for your health if you avoid doing it in the evening, King’s College London researchers found.
GettySnacking is good for you if you eat more nutritious foods and avoid it in the evening, a study shows[/caption]
More than 70 per cent of people admit to snacking at least twice a day, prompting concern from some experts that it could be contributing to obesity.
But the study of more than 1,000 Brits found what you’re snacking on is actually more important when it comes to health.
Dr Kate Bermingham said: “The quality of snacking is more important than the quantity or frequency of snacking, thus choosing high quality snacks over highly processed snacks is likely beneficial.
“Timing is also important, with late night snacking being unfavourable for health.”
Obesity is a growing problem around the world, with around a quarter of Brits classed as obese and a further 38 per cent overweight.
Snacking has been linked with an increased risk of obesity in some studies, thanks to the increase in daily calories it can add to your diet.
However, Dr Bermingham said: “Surprisingly little has been published on snacking, despite the fact that it accounts for 20 to 25 per cent of energy intake.
“PREDICT followed a large number of people and captured detailed information on their snacking behaviours, allowing this in-depth exploration of snacking on health.”
The latest research, presented at Nutrition 2023 in Boston, used data from the ZOE PREDICT project — a group of large in-depth nutritional research studies.
Researchers looked at how much people snacked, when they did it and what they ate.
Around 13 per cent snacked in the morning, with 39 per cent doing so in the afternoon, 31 per cent in the evening and 17 per cent grazing — snacking throughout the day.
They also analysed people’s blood fats and insulin levels to see how snacking affected them.
Snacking on more nutritious foods was linked to better blood sugar and lipid levels.
Late evening snacking made both of these worse because it reduced how long people’s overnight fasting time was, researchers said.
How much people snacked, the calorie level and how frequently they did so did not affect any health measures, they found.
Dr Bermingham said: “We observed only weak relationships between snack quality and the remainder of the diet, which highlights snacking as an independent modifiable dietary feature that could be targeted to improve health.”