Is Snacking Making Us Fat?

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when obesity became an epidemic, even tougher when it comes to childhood obesity, but general consensus within the scientific community points to sometimes in the early 1970s. So what was the turning point? Was there one particular event to trigger the epidemic? Some point to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a government released guideline to what foods we should be eating, released around the time obesity started becoming the norm rather than the exception. Others, like diet guru Jason Fung, claim it has more to do with snacking.

In an article published on Medium, Fung outlines survey results from 1977, which outlined eating habits. Back then, the most people ate were three meals a day: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Comparatively speaking, by 2004 most people were eating six times a day, with some people eating as often as ten times per day.

The problem isn’t an increased quantity of food, per se, but an increase in how many of our waking hours we spend eating. Whereas once breakfast would be at 8:00am, dinner at 6:00pm, and no after-dinner snacks, people now eat well into the late hours of the night or even into the early morning. This, in no small part, is due to snacking. With numerous studies showing that people who stop eating early in the day have better luck with weight loss and weight maintenance thanks to lower insulin levels, it may be time to rethink our snacking habits.

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Easy Ways To Eat Healthier

You don’t have to look very far to find the latest fad diet, but more often than not healthier eating is a matter of getting into healthier habits. Here are two easy ways you can start eating healthier today.

Cut the carbs. It’s definitely not a matter of cutting out carbs completely. Complex carbohydrates are an important source of slow burning fuel for your body and a diet completely devoid of carbs can leave you feeling tired and listless. That said, when it comes to carbs, portion control plays a big part. It may be tempting to make a second sandwich if you’re still hungry, but those extra slices of bread constitute a lot of calories, and you may be better off supplementing with a light snack consisting of fruits and vegetables.

Your hand - the key to a healthy meal. Portion size is important, and not just when it comes to carbs. While snacking in between meals is certainly a culprit, it’s often excessive portion sizes that lead to overeating and considerably more calories consumed than we need throughout the day. But how to determine just how much food is the right quantity? The answer is just an arm’s length away. Have a look at your open hand, a good rule of thumb for a healthy meal would be a piece of protein roughly the size of your palm, with about five fingers’ worth of vegetable on the side.

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