My mate's very austere mother is like this. She goes on and on all the time about how people "never used to snack" and basically seems to believe that it is the sole reason why people are overweight and obese. It's also an angle people take on Mumsnet all the time and it is really bringing the eye-rolls from me.
Personally, I couldn't do without my snacks. All these people saying they don't need a snack must be sitting on their bottoms all day.
I do an active job (I don't sit down all day and I also run, walk, lift at work). I need my big bowl of porridge and banana for breakfast, my morning fruit snack at about 10 am (usually another banana) my work lunch (yesterday leftover chilli, salad, apple and orange). I get back at 4 or 5 depending, yesterday had 4 oat cakes and cheddar with chutney, then went to the pool with the kids to swim until 6, then I made our dinner which was white fish and bean stew, new potatoes, broccoli. I had a small piece of a cake I made at about 10pm. FYI I am also LOSING weight (6.5 stone so far, over 3 years), I write down everything I eat. Yesterday's calorie count was 1800, with 2 snacks.
The anti snack thing is just self righteous twaddle, you can spread your food out how you want, I find if I listen to my body and eat when I am hungry I am less likely to over eat, and if I hadn't had my oatcakes there is no way I would have managed taking the kid's swimming (they had a snack too, peanut butter on toast and bananas)
It's not about how often you eat, it's about how much you eat, how much exercise you get, and obviously what you're snacking on. But that said- I have gone through periods of time where those snacks were small bags of crisps/KitKat's etc and still lost weight as calories were equivalent.