Awareness about the dangers of excessive sugar consumption and dietary trends such as intermittent fasting can put that mid-afternoon snack that constitutes the afternoon snack in check.
“We are snacking more and more on our diet,” says Toni Massanés, director of the Alícia Foundation. “We eat more and smaller meals, but, at the same time, we are leaving the guidelines of having breakfast at mid-morning and having a snack. It is difficult to say if we are all stopping snacking because society is complex: we have become very inhomogeneous locally”.
As detailed by Mabel Gracia and Jesús Contreras in Food and culture. Anthropological perspectives (Ariel, 2005), the intake pattern is undergoing a phenomenon of deconcentration of intakes that consists “in the transfer of solid foods (relatively concentrated at lunch and dinner) in favor of ‘small’ meals (breakfast, the ‘sandwich’ or ‘snack’ in the morning, the snack and the ‘sandwich’ at night are the most frequent and most copious. Conversely, the menu for main meals is simplified: the main meal at ‘ new style’ is organized around a single plate”.
Likewise, a disimplementation of intakes is also taking place. “The ‘new’ meals do not take place at fixed times. Neither the beginning nor the end of the various meals are located within narrow time slots. This would explain the existence of the snack-dinner, which brings together a late snack with an early dinner, perhaps with food from both intakes or advancing to the snack a more substantial dish that we usually reserve for dinner.
Massanés recalls the bread with chocolate, the three-colored quince spread on bread with butter, even the slice of bread with wine and sugar (the popular Catalan proverb praised the goodness of wine with its La carn fa carn i el vi fa sang, is say, “Meat makes meat and wine makes blood”), the coca de forner and the women who used to meet at the farms on Calle Petritxol in Barcelona to drink hot chocolate. “Before, sugar was not so demonized, and yet we ate less of it. Today, despite all the warnings, we are doing something wrong because childhood obesity continues to rise.
For nutritionist Aitor Sánchez, forgetting to have a snack is also related to trends such as intermittent fasting. “Although I am not very sure if we are stopping having snacks and there is no data in this regard, it is true that each time, since the consultations, we place less emphasis on eating 4 or 5 times a day. We recommend less and less to eat mid-morning or mid-afternoon because we have more evidence that it is not necessary to eat throughout the day. What’s more: the nutritional quality analyzes of the intakes show that what we eat at mid-morning or for a snack is of low quality”.
Sánchez explains that having a snack can be interesting in those cases in which this intake helps to maintain good habits. “Fruit, nuts, natural yogurt, a small piece of wholemeal bread that is not stuffed with sausage are good food decisions if you are not exceeding your energy intake throughout the day.” Currently -he states-, fragmented intakes are recommended for people who need to include a large volume of food throughout the day, such as professional athletes, very active people or children who are growing or practicing a sport, but always with nutritional nuances”. If we are more sedentary people, the snack is not essential and we can skip it.
For the baker Daniel Jordà, from Panes Creativos, the big bet in the bakery sector is made in the morning. “Maybe it’s to reduce losses or because there are already fewer sales in the afternoon,” he says, which would indicate that decrease in the consumption of snacks. In his bakery in the Vilapicina and La Torre Llobeta neighborhood, in Barcelona, ??there are not many individual sweets typically designed for snacks. Thus, Jordà explains that when the children leave school they do not receive a large influx of people and that customers usually arrive later, for bread or something salty, “which they surely eat for dinner.” The baker explains this change in consumption habits in relation to “an awareness of eating less in the afternoon and new dietary trends.”
Why is the snack associated with a sweet snack? Sánchez explains that it is not due to a physiological need, that is, our body is not demanding sugar or energy quickly. “It is simply a matter of culture and convenience. On the one hand, cultural because, for example, many of us have had a snack with our grandparents and they wanted to give us something that was scarce for them – it is also true that “the salty world and the sweet world were much more separated before”, as Massanés points out. , and these small sweet treats occupied the moments of rest during the day, normally accompanied by milk, coffee or infusion, “something with which we associate eating a sweet more,” says Sánchez. “And convenience because the food industry has placed emphasis on promoting these unhealthy, sweet snacks, but practical in the sense that they are not very perishable, very portable and easy for children to consume, since they do not require preparation or preparation by a adult”.
The snack has not always been one of the meals of the day and it has not been for everyone either. The Food Observatory in Food and its circumstances: pleasure, convenience and health. Study on the eating behaviors of the Spanish population (V Alimentaria International Food Forum 2004)– recalls that behavior regarding food is articulated according to the social norm, that is, conventions such as the different intakes of food, manners at the table or meals according to the calendar, and the dietary norm, made up of the scientific and nutritional criteria disclosed by health personnel, and which fluctuate over time.
This would explain, for example, the snacks in Valencia at the end of the 19th century (Gracia and Contreras, opus cit.): the upper class did not have snacks, but the workers did, who ate fruit or salad, while the children and Middle-class youth ate “chocolate with bread and biscuits, sweets or cheeses or fruits of the season, with bread.” To this day, according to the results of the research, “the snack is a lighter and sweeter intake, similar in composition to lunch”.
Eating between hours is related to the working day: working can increase energy requirements and, as the Food Observatory points out, “requires moments of sociability, a break with work itself.” Although we also have a snack on the weekend, perhaps we do it in a different way: the typical cookies or an apple can give way to something more abundant, perhaps a piece of cake in a cafeteria or a salty snack in a bar.
The study describes how the most common pattern continues to be 3 meals a day (31.2%) and 17.6% also includes snacks. The products chosen for snacks are: pastries, cookies and sweets (32.8%), fruit (19.3%), sausages and cheeses (17.6%), dairy products (15.2%), nuts (7 .4%) and potatoes (6.7%). And to drink: juices (21.7%), water (20.8%), soft drinks (14.2%) – a figure that will probably have increased with the appearance of energy drinks and their consumption by children and young people , who make up the population that has the most snacks–, milk and dairy products (13.2%) and coffee with milk (9.6%). Respondents who claimed to have a snack referred to this intake as part of the multiple intakes they had during the day and which they considered part of a healthy diet, as well as to maintain constant energy or the belief that weight gain is not so easy in this way. Precisely, the question of weight is also used to argue against snacks.
Regarding time, it is estimated that if we have a snack in a bar it will take about 49 minutes, similar to if we do it at school or university (46 minutes) and unlike work, where only 23 minutes will be used. However, the study shows that snacks are still carried out mostly at home (74%), with only 8.6% of snacks eaten outdoors, in streets, gardens and squares.
