Snack culture = unhealthiness?

[Jourdain11]

I watched the 1950s episode of Back in Time for Dinner on BBC last night and it was quite interesting that, while the young family members hated the food (which admittedly looked grim), they said that they realised that they didn't actually need to have snacks all the time.

I understand that there are a lot of considerations to take into account when "combatting the nation's obesity crisis", but I really wonder if a lot of the blame lies with snacks?

It seems weird to me that, from nursery onwards, we promote this culture of having constant snacks between meals. Healthy snacks, unhealthy snacks, "treat snacks"... much of which is just unnecessary eating. And also, some of the snacks have grown to the size of small meals!

In France, where I grew up, snacking between meals was not and is not really a thing. You are supposed to feel hungry for meals! The only "snack" we ever had as kids was an after-school snack, and that would be, for example, a piece of fruit, or a yoghurt, or a slice of bread and cheese.

To put it into context, the "3 meals, 3 snacks" model is used in ED recovery programmes, designed for aggressive weight gain, i.e. because it is actually dangerous for the person to remain at their current body weight. Yet it seems like quite a large proportion of the population are also following this model!

This isn't intended as a vilification of British eating habits (as I know this exists in many other cultures also) but it does make me wonder if we have collectively got into a warped mindset about healthy eating habits and hunger, and whether this may be a big contributor to the health crises we face in this country, which have made so many people more vulnerable to serious impact from Covid-19.

Those petit écolier biscuits are delish, so much tastier than the most frequent equivalent in England (Choco Leibniz- which are nice, just not as amazing as petit écoliers). We've just got back from France and the petit écoliers melted in the car. I had to eat them as one 'sandwich' of three biscuits glued together. It was still lovely.

@DeeTractor

"great 🤷‍♀️I've never read it before."

You must be new here. Allow me to summarise: Every adult in the UK (apart from those on MN) is a fat gelatinous blob whose only instinct is to constantly feed and drink. You will see this referred to as "gobbling/guzzling/stuffing/gorging/devouring" but never just "eating". This is accompanied by "having a starbucks cup/water bottle" super glued to their massive ham fists from which they constantly suck at like starving wolf cubs at their mother's teat. Similarly, every child in the UK is a clone of Augustus Gloop, except those whose parents post on MN; these children will invariably be tall, skinny and athletic and couldn't gain weight if their lives depended on it. They have also never eaten chocolate and don't know what McDonald's is.

Meanwhile, in continental Europe, there are no fat people are everyone floats around like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. They spend their time sitting in little cafes drinking black coffee and smoking entirely too much, but this is OK because it keeps them slim. McDonald's doesn't exist and children only eat crudites and (homemade) hummus.

I loled so hard at this

In France when I was on home stay, I remember having bread and dunking it in a bowl of Nesquik for breakfast. Definitely not coffee and a fag (which isn’t exactly healthy). I’m not sure if cereal is a big thing there though.

I’m not a snacker, I eat four meals a day, the reason I don’t really snack is because I have type one diabetes and I’m a bit lazy.

My son is five, he has breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. He sometimes chooses to skip the morning snack if he has had a large breakfast. He is anything but fat and at five will stop eating if he is full, even if its his favourite meal. If he didn’t have his snacks he wouldn’t be getting sufficient calories each day.

I guess it is absolutely to do with the size of the meals also - because if you do choose to eat 6 times but small portions / fewer courses, you're essentially still having 3 meals (or 3 meals plus a snack) but more spread out.

Also, when children are actually hungry they'll be happier to eat whatever inedible muck is served up to them 😂 Speaking as someone who has just fed their children a very "interesting" meal of Everything Left in the Fridge.

I think this is nonsense when you get to the toddler a toddler’s stomach is in proportion to the size of their body, so they don’t need to be fed more often. I’ve put my one year old son onto 3 meals a day (one possible afternoon snack) and that is that. I’m shocked at the tales of them being fed constantly at nursery!

Toddlers are also considerably more active than adults, both physically and in terms of brain development. My toddler is ravenous for her mid morning piece of fruit and mid afternoon cup of milk - and she devours all of her meals too. She’s bordering on underweight, but at her check up we were told the above about growth and and brain development.

Way, way in the past toddlers would be breastfeeding well into toddlerhood, and thus would in effect be constantly ‘snacking’ in order to keep up with their energy needs.

I think the snacking thing is just a way to constantly sell us food we dont need

Agreed, probably!

45 years ago babies were taken away from mums overnight in hospital and given water if they cried rather than being fed every 2-3 hours as they are now. Science snd recommendations move on.

I think people ate just as many snacks back in the day, but the term snacking just didn't exist. Elevensies consisted of a hot drink and cake or biscuits, same mid afternoon, people had a hot sweet pudding every day. For packed lunch we had a multi pack packet of crisps and a club/penguin/viscount or similar and that was just the norm at the time. My DC have never had a sandwich without having 2 good size portions of veg on the side. Times have just changed. Food is one of life's great divides and assumptions about wealth or education are not always correct.

When I was 11 I stayed with a French family for two weeks in a place called Les Lilas, in Paris. The family was working class and lived in a block of flats.

For breakfast, they would eat those individually wrapped chocolate croissants filled with chocolate - dipped in chocolate milk.
My enduring memory was that every day we had shop-bought chocolate mousse for pudding. They showed me how to dip a baguette like it was the height of sophistication. Every night we'd dip bread into our chocolate mousses, while sitting at the dining table, in the front room with the TV on (we weren't allowed to do that at home) watching Vanessa Paradis singing Joe Le Taxi. I remember them having more rubbishy food in their kitchen that we were ever allowed at home (this was 1988). I'm sure there are plenty of French people who have a marvellous, healthy diet. But I am sure there are plenty of French families that don't - like the family, I stayed at.

@mamamia2020 that’s classic I bet you loved that!

Lol, sounds like they lived on a diet of essentially bread and chocolate!

It's just calories. Eat them all in one meal, space them out, whatever.
I'm size 8 and I graze pretty constantly, always have done. My husband is similar. If lunch isn't for an hour or two he'd eat tortilla chips with hummus or a bagel with cheese, something quite substantial. He has cake at least once and probably twice a day. He still has visible abs so it didn't make him that fat.
Honestly, most of our friends eat similarly. If we followed the Michael Moseley diet I doubt we'd be married or have any friends as we'd be so hangry all the time.
Reasons for obesity are much more complicated than not snacking. Of course if you eat 3x600 cal meals and 3x100cal snacks you'll be eating less if you cut the snacks or skip a meal. But you might be hungrier, eat more at meals, make worse food choices, have less energy to move around... it's all individual.

@Piglet89
I did love it! Especially the chocolate mousse, I was never allowed them at home. Even now if I see a chocolate mousse in the yogurt section I feel tempted to buy one with a french stick and recreate the experience. In their kitchen they had lines of bottles of Orangina lined up - hardly healthy. Whenever anyone gets snooty about the 'superior' French way of eating, I always smile to myself.

@mamamia2020My husband worked in France based in the back end of beyond on cycling tour holidays as cycle fixer/bag carrier/general dogsbody. I remember chatting with him about the French and how sophisticated they were. He was like “errr not where I stayed they weren’t! They were basically all overweight hillbillies!” 😲

I mean, there is regional variation in France as anywhere else too! In Strasbourg they just eat potatoes and dumplings and in the South they eat nothing but stew with excess onion and garlic.... etc.

I also agree with you OP. My DC didn’t have snacks after school as we used to eat early and I wanted them hungry so they’d eat their dinner!

Italian breakfasts aren't super healthy either - A bowl of warm milk with a bit of cafe' d'orzo/cocoa and lots of 'breakfast biscuits' is a typical DC breakfast.

we just had fried gnocchi for dinner with a butter sauce

@Camomila

Italian breakfasts aren't super healthy either - A bowl of warm milk with a bit of cafe' d'orzo/cocoa and lots of 'breakfast biscuits' is a typical DC breakfast.

we just had fried gnocchi for dinner with a butter sauce

I think what Italian and French breakfast has in common is that the idea of a savoury breakfast is incredible. Breakfast was ALWAYS sweet. Croissant, jam, biscuits, fruits, cafe au lait... but the concept of bacon and eggs and avocado for breakfast? Just weird!

Completely agree with you, OP.
I must admit, I never knew till I read it on here that some people keep stashes of snacks in their desks at work, meet their kids out of school with a snack, eat things like burgers when they're watching a film in the cinema, or take snacks to soft play. All seems very weird to me.

I think what Italian and French breakfast has in common is that the idea of a savoury breakfast is incredible. Breakfast was ALWAYS sweet. Croissant, jam, biscuits, fruits, cafe au lait... but the concept of bacon and eggs and avocado for breakfast? Just weird!

I've seen French news reports where doctors are trying to promote things like cheese and ham at breakfast. Could replace the tartine. And maybe I'll encourage my French friends to stop adding sugar to natural yoghurt, that would be a start!

Ha, good luck to them! I still, to this day, can't stomach salty stuff for breakfast.

I think you can get around the natural yoghurt thing by calling it "Greek yoghurt" and then they're like, oh okay, it's supposed to be HEALTHY.

Do they not do cheese and cold cuts at breakfast in France or is that just a German/Dutch thing?

In Alsace, maybe? Or at a hotel. But I never knew anyone who does it.

Alsace is on the German border so that might be why. I remember staying in a Dutch B&B years ago and we had cold cuts and cheese with bread for breakfast, and these horrible chocolate sprinkle things.

Spain, it depends on where I've stayed but it's usually been in youth hostels, so either cereal or croissants/toast (and I do snack a lot when I'm there but that's because I'm at Primavera Sound and I keep weird hours because the bands are on very late).

We had cheese and things like ham when we stayed in a French hotel. Maybe that was to cater for foreign visitors though. British people usually expect a substantial breakfast when we're on holiday, even if we don't eat it at home.