The anti-snack brigade are self-righteous, moralising nonsense-merchants.

Whats this anti water bottle stuff about ?

People don't believe in drinking water?

I have water with me 24/7, am I being judged

But how many people with an opinion on snacks (and voicing them) is anyone, including the OP, meeting? I just can't imagine how this is even a thing that registers with anyone. For example, there may be cake or biscuits at work and someone might say they're not having any, because they're trying not to eat so much sugar or snack less generally, but I've never heard anyone say that they don't think anyone should eat between meals.

Also, as my late dad always used to point out when anyone said this - people absolutely did used to snack. ‘Elevenses’ was always a thing, and stopping for tea and biscuits mid-afternoon. My parents started working in offices in London c. 1960 when a tea lady used to come round with a trolley twice a day with tea, buns, biscuits etc.

It's just not true that kids never snacked. Humans have snacked for centuries.

You've said it yourself that you and your friends had biscuits coming in from school... That's snacking...

The mindset of trying to force your eating into three set meals and that those meals need to meet all your requirements and you shouldn't eat in between them if probably pretty damaging. The poster who mention she and her husband eating when they're hungry throughout the day and feeling better for it sounds much more intuitive.

How did you manage to have 6.5 stone to lose?

You just have it with the meals 🤷‍♀️

Banana with your porridge

It's a pretty standard to have a sandwich, an appleand a yogurt or bit of cheese or whatever for your lunch.

Dessert is apple pie or something

I’ve considered posting about this exact thing. It’s interesting that when people talk about not snacking they combine it with ‘decent’ main meals. I’ve never been able to eat the amount of food I see many people have as a meal. When eating out I struggle with 2 courses, let alone three, and often just have the main meal with some left over. So I snack to ensure my body has the calories it needs across the day. And, shock horror, this will include cake, crisps, biscuits, etc., if I want them.

Recently I was in a situation where I couldn’t snack and the only thing available was the meals. This didn’t lead to me significantly increasing what I ate at meal time, so I lost several pounds over two weeks (not a good thing) and I spent a lot of time hungry.

There are quite a lot of closet orthorexics on here who like nothing better than to tell people that anyone who eats over 1,000 calories a day is the reason for the obesity epidemic.

These are the same people who post in painful detail about their food intake and get a weird little smug buzz from telling other people that they’re eating too much.

Like most of these topics it should be based on common sense. Obviously healthy snacks (whole grain bread or fruit) are better than biscuits or crisps and obviously someone with an active lifestyle can afford to cut themselves more slack than someone who is desk bound or already overweight.

Any hard line restrictions on food, unless mandated by a doctor, are usually silly and self defeating.

I don’t understand how people eat fruit if they don’t snack?

I sometimes have fruit with breakfast but usually I’ll have something like an apple mid morning and then an orange in the evening.

I don’t fancy them after I’ve eaten a meal and so unless I have them as a snack then I’d likely not eat them.

Obviously if you’re grazing on cakes and chocolate constantly throughout the day then you’re going to put on weight but a KitKat and apple a day isn’t going to make a massive difference.

Totally agree with this. it comes across as patronising too, assuming other people don't know that eating more than your body needs makes you fat, no matter when you eat.

If this is a reference to Wigan Pier, he made the point that the working class are more inclined towards junk food because their lives are shit basically and if you feel like shit, are you more likely to go home and eat a carrot or cake? He was right, as with many things.

I’m half French, that side of the family hates snacking. It’s very much engrained in their culture to eat humongous meals but no snacks. I have said similar on other threads and had people who are not French tell me this is inaccurate but it’s definitely the case in my family… They possibly incidentally don’t have weight issues whereas my British side do, and they do snack.

That is not to say I agree with the link between snacks and obesity, just that the French side have a completely different attitude towards the act of eating. I’m always busy so I eat on the go constantly, I rarely sit down to cherish my food and usually wolf it down between other tasks. My French Grandma would seethe at me if she knew. They like to sit and have a full three course meal as a family but like every meal, not just dinner.

That said, I’m not obese and I do snack. I need to snack. My Dad would say this is because I don’t eat adequate meals and he’s probably right but I’m time poor! If I don’t snack between breakfast and lunch, my stomach starts growling loudly and it’s super embarrassing. If I don’t eat between lunch and dinner, I get lightheaded and dizzy.

There’s snacking and then there’s snacking. A few rice/oat cakes are one thing. A box of Maltesers would be quite another

Your original post reads a bit like a humblebrag about how healthy your diet is - which it is, as you know.

It's snacking on sweets, over-sweet chocolate, sugary or over-sweetened drinks, super-moreish salted snacks high in unhealthy fats etc that makes people overweight.

But once someone is an adult, it's up to them what they eat. I wish they wouldn't market these things to kids and teens though.

Yeah, they're more my idea of a snack than a couple of oatcakes.

A long time ago I worked on a well known snack brand.

Their internal (ie for local distributors not for the public) brand promotional literature was very clear that they saw the big advantage of food and especially snacks over products like toothpaste or washing powder was that there wasn't a natural limit on consumption - people only need to wash clothes when they are dirty but they can aways be persuaded to eat just a little bit more. And they were open that their strategy was to encourage more snacking habits.

I grew up in the 60's and didn't have "snacks", neither did my friends. We'd have a bag of crisps or a penguin biscuit occasionally as a treat but eating between meals wasn't a thing for most kids. But then, we always had breakfast (porridge, a boiled egg or poached eggs on toast for example), lunch would be a cooked school meal or a packed lunch and then always a substantial home cooked evening meal eaten together around the table. My mum always did a homemade pudding after dinner too. Some kids might have a mug of horlicks before bedtime but that was about it. There was no obesity and I don't remember anyone talking about snacks. But then, there weren't any "manufactured" snacks anyway and we were always out and about playing, so not at home thinking about food. Also, people generally had less money then, so if there were biscuits and cake etc in the house they had to last.

If I ate what you do op I’d be the size of a house. That’s a huge amount of food for my lifestyle. I do not snack, I didn’t as a kid either, no one did, at most you got 1-2 plain biscuits coming in from school but my mum rationed those to 1 on special occasions! My own dc were not given snacks routinely and as adults do not snack, it’s a habit thing. A piece of fruit mid morning is absolutely fine, but for those of us who are above ideal weight, it is not advisable to eat more

It’s wrong to generalise either way. It all depends on level of activity and content of meals. Your way works for you - bully for you!

However, I agree with the poster who said the problem is that many children seem to expect to eat something every couple of hours as a matter of course because they fancy it, rather than wait until they’re hungry, so they get into the habit of eating snacks even when their body doesn’t need them.