According to scientists, this is the right way

Nutritious food

as if Brooke Steinberg

July 25, 2023 | 9:31 am

 

Everyone has an opinion on the right way to snack, and now even science has an opinion.

New research suggests that snacking isn’t bad for you—as long as you eat nutritious meals and don’t snack late at night.

Whether or not snacking is good for you has long been debated, and the data on the relationship between snacking and health is confusingly inconsistent.

Kate Birmingham, a nutritional science researcher at King’s College London and lead author of the study, said: “Surprisingly little has been published on snacks, which account for 20-25% of energy intake. he said in a statement..

KCL researchers looked at data from more than 1,000 people to determine whether snacking affects health and the quality of snacking matters.

The study was part of the ZOE PREDICT project, a series of large and in-depth nutrition studies using the proprietary ZOE app.

About 17% of participants were classified as “grazers” and one in three were “night snackers” – eating most of their snacks after 9pm.Getty Images / iStockphoto

Participants kept a food diary and wore a blood sugar monitor to track their personal snacking habits. This data allowed Birmingham and her team to look at the relationship between the quantity, quality, and timing of snacks and their intake of blood fat and insulin — the latter two of which are both important ways to measure heart health and metabolism.

“We observed only weak associations between snacking quality and the rest of the diet, suggesting snacking as an independent modifiable dietary behavior to improve health,” Birmingham said.

Birmingham announced its results on Monday in Boston Diet 2023Annual Meeting of the American Dietetic Association.

95% of the participants in the study had at least one snack per day – an average of 2.28 daily snacks – which is approximately 22% of their daily calorie intake.

High-quality snacks such as fruits, vegetables, and nuts have healthy levels of blood glucose and fat.Getty ImagesResearchers have found four categories of snackers whose bodies respond differently to snacking: morning snack (more than half of daily snacks eaten before noon), afternoon snack (between 12pm and 6pm), evening snack (after 6pm) and a different method of snacking – also called “grazing”.

Those who snacked after 9 p.m. had worse blood glucose and fat markers than those who ate during the day, possibly because snacking shortens the fasting window between dinner and breakfast and slows down the process of breaking down and digesting food.

About 17% of participants were classified as “grazers” and one in three were “night snackers” – eating most of their snacks after 9pm.

The study also indicated that the quality of food a person eats is more important than the quantity or frequency. High-quality snacks, such as those found in fruits, vegetables, and nuts, keep blood glucose and fat levels at a healthy level.

“Our research shows that snack quality is more important than snack quantity or frequency; so it’s important to choose high-quality snacks over highly processed snacks,” Birmingham said.