Snacking

If you’re anything like every person ever, you love a cheeky snack.

Snacking is a part of life. We’re biologically inclined to take food and eat it at every opportunity, so the urge to succumb can often be overwhelming.

But before you turn around and say ‘See Karen, we’re biologically inclined to take food and eat it at every opportunity, so the urge to succumb can often be overwhelming! So, it’s not my fault! Blame nature!’, we have to consider the world we evolved in and the world we now live in. I think you’ll find they are two very different places.

Throughout history we have been a typically nomadic, hunter-gatherer-type people, foraging and eating foods wherever we could find them.

Food was far more scarce back then, so we took whatever we could get. This is also why we tend to like sweet or fatty foods, as they provide a higher amount of calories than bland foods which, when you’re in a food-scarce environment is important, but when you’re surrounded by calorically dense and nutrient scarce foods, not so much.

I think you’ll agree that for most of us, scarcity of food is not a big issue, and we all know that junk food is bad and whole foods are good (bless you, Healthy Harold).

So, why do we continue to snack on rubbish when we know how bad it is?

Well, lots of reasons.

Here are the main ones.

Hunger: This is the most obvious reason to eat. We’re hungry, so we eat, no need to delve too deeply into this one.

Boredom: Boredom is a huge snacking trigger, the way smoking, drinking and playing inane games on our phones are (why can’t the good things ever be triggered by boredom?!). We may not necessarily be hungry, it’s just a way for us to pass the time in a manner that is pleasurable to us. This is also why we tend to go for junk foods when we’re bored. You’re not hungry, so carrot sticks aren’t going to make you feel good, you want a flavour hit to please your limbic system, so chips it is!

Stress: The most prominent theories of stress-induced eating revolve around emotional dysregulation (using food in the belief that it will make us feel better), escape-of-self-awareness (using food as a distraction to shift focus away from negative or stressful emotions), cortisol secretion (making us crave salty and fatty foods) and breaking of restrained eating, which is the one that applies to most of us. Most of us practice restrained eating in some form, which is good, because if we didn’t we would literally eat anything and everything whenever we wanted. Fun to think about, but not overly practical if you’re at all concerned with avoiding having your heart explode. Abstaining from certain foods is easy when we’re feeling calm and rational, but not so easy when we’re stressed. When we deprive ourselves of food, the body feels as if it is being starved and when it enters a distressed state, this feeling turns to one of deprivation, causing us to want to eat to get out of it. Thus, we eat. This is a fascinating topic and one that I will revisit in future articles. Suffice it to say that stress causes many of us to abandon our resolve and grab the nearest tasty snack!

Social factors: A huge Framingham study revealed that people were 57% more likely to be obese if one of their friends became obese, and 71% more likely if that friend was of the same gender. That is an alarming figure (claiming the unintentional pun there) and one that can not be ignored. The reason is attributed primarily to social norms, meaning the behaviour and body type we see in those close to us becomes what is normal and acceptable for us. This becomes true of snacking as well. If your friend wants to pull over and grab a pie from the servo, or your colleague asks if you want something from the vending machine, even if you wouldn’t normally do those things, you say yes because the behaviour is now deemed acceptable and will help you to fit in.

Habit: Are you grabbing a cookie because you want it? Or because that’s what you do at 3pm when you make your afternoon cup of tea? Habits are incredibly powerful, and one of the biggest reasons why we snack. Charles Duhigg covers this topic brilliantly and states that there are 5 factors that can trigger our habits: Time (I always snack at 3pm), location (I grab a cookie when I walk into the kitchen), preceding event (I eat a cookie when I finish a task), emotional state (I snack on cookies when I’m stressed), other people (I’m only eating cookies because John offered me some). Our habits dictate so much of what we do during the day, and it can be argued that all of the other snacking triggers fall into this group in one way or another.

This is another huge topic and we’ll be breaking it down early next year to help you recognise and adjust your habits to work for you instead of against you.

Have a think about your snacking habits. Are they healthy? Do they need some work? Did the explanations in this article help you to understand them a little more?

As we now know, the triggers for snacking are pretty powerful, and will require equally powerful strategies to combat them.

Fortunately, we come prepared.

Stick around because next week we’re going to look at how we can change our snacking habits through ourselves and our environment without breaking a sweat!

If you've found this article helpful or interesting or you think someone might benefit from a little more information, share it around!

It means so much to us to share this information and to reach as many people as we can, so leave us your comments, questions, support or rebukes in the comments section below and let's start a conversation about this!

Cruwys, T, .Bevelander, K, Hermans, R, 2014, ‘Social modeling of eating: A review of when and why social influence affects food intake and choice’, Appetite, Vol 86, page 3-18.

Duhigg, C, 2012, ‘The power of habit: why we do what we do in life and business’, New York, Random House.

Heatherton, T, Baumeister, R, 1991, ‘Binge eating as escape from self‐awareness’, Psychology Bulletin, Vol 110, page 86–108.

Hess, J, Jonnalagadda, S, SLavin, J, 2016, ‘What Is a Snack, Why Do We Snack, and How Can We Choose Better Snacks? A Review of the Definitions of Snacking, Motivations to Snack, Contributions to Dietary Intake, and Recommendations for Improvement’, Advances in Nutrition, Vol 7, Issue 3, page 466-475.

Greeno, C, Wing, R, 1994, ‘Stress-Induced Eating’, Psychological Bulletin, Vol 115, Issue 3, page 444-464.

Strien, T, 2018, ‘Causes of Emotional Eating and Matched Treatment of Obesity’, Current Diabetes Reports, Vol 18, Issue 6, page 35-