I don’t snack much anymore.
That’s actually strange when I think about it, because there was a time when eating between meals seemed completely normal to me.
Breakfast.
Something mid-morning.
Lunch.
Something in the afternoon.
Dinner.
Maybe something while watching television.
Food was always somewhere nearby.
These days I usually eat one main meal, sometimes another smaller one, and then I’m done.
I’m not walking around heroically resisting the refrigerator.
I’m just not hungry.
And that got me wondering:
When did eating all day become normal?
We’ve Definitely Become a Nation of Snackers
The history isn’t quite as neat as saying nobody snacked in the 1950s and then somebody invented it in 1972.
People have eaten between meals for a very long time.
But American eating patterns really did change.
Researchers looking at national food surveys found that the percentage of adults reporting snacks increased from about 71% in 1977–78 to 97% by 2003–06.
The average number of daily snacking occasions increased too.
And snacks went from providing about 18% of daily calories to 24%.
That’s a meaningful change.
But even here, the research isn’t perfectly tidy. Another analysis using different national survey methods found much smaller changes in overall eating frequency over roughly the same decades.
Which is a good reminder not to build an entire nutritional religion around one statistic.
Something clearly changed in how Americans eat.
Exactly why is considerably messier.
Insulin Isn’t an On-Off Switch
Here’s another thing I’ve changed my thinking about.
I’ve written before that every time you eat, insulin rises, which puts your body into “fat-storage mode,” making it impossible to burn fat until insulin falls again.
There’s a piece of truth buried in there.
Insulin does help regulate whether we’re storing or releasing energy, and eating changes which fuels our bodies use.
But human metabolism isn’t a light switch.
Eat = storing fat.
Don’t eat = burning fat.
Too simple.
Your body is constantly moving energy around, and what ultimately happens to your body fat depends on a lot more than whether you ate something at 3:17 in the afternoon.
So I’m not going to tell you that snacking automatically makes you fat.
It doesn’t.
But Snacks Can Still Add Up
This is the part that interests me more.
Researchers have found that calories consumed from snacks increased considerably over the decades.
One analysis found that American adults were consuming roughly 180 more daily calories from food snacks in 2003–06 than adults had in 1977–78. Calories from beverages increased too.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Because whether you call something a snack, mini-meal or Fred doesn’t particularly matter.
You’re still eating it.
A handful of this.
A bar of that.
Something because it’s 10:30.
Something because you’re bored.
Something because you’re watching television.
None of those has to be enormous.
Do it often enough and it can become a meaningful amount of food.
I Stopped Eating Because the Clock Said So
This is probably the biggest change for me.
I don’t believe everybody should eat once a day.
I don’t believe everybody should fast for 16 hours.
And I don’t believe three meals is biologically ordained while four meals is a violation of human evolution.
I just started paying attention to hunger.
Am I actually hungry?
That’s a surprisingly useful question.
Sometimes the answer is yes.
So I eat.
Sometimes I realize I’m reaching for something because it’s there.
Or because it’s the time of day when I’ve always eaten something.
Those aren’t the same thing.
What Works for Me May Not Work for You
My eating has evolved quite a bit over nineteen years.
Today I’m carnivore-ish.
Meat, eggs, animal foods. Low carbohydrate. Very little ultra-processed food.
Most days I have one main meal sometime between noon and three.
Occasionally I’ll eat something later.
I don’t track it particularly closely.
And I don’t spend my afternoon dreaming about food.
That’s what works for me.
Someone else may feel lousy eating that way.
An athlete training hard might need something completely different.
Somebody managing diabetes with medication needs to be particularly thoughtful about large changes in meal timing.
There is no prize for going the longest without eating.
Try One Simple Experiment
Don’t stop snacking because I stopped snacking.
For a few days, just notice why you’re eating between meals.
Hungry?
Eat.
But if you’re reaching for something automatically, give yourself a minute.
Ask:
Am I hungry, or is this just what I normally do at 3 o’clock?
Maybe you eat it anyway.
Fine.
This isn’t a test.
You’re gathering information.
That’s how most of the things that have stuck in my life started.
Not with somebody giving me another rule.
With getting curious about something I was already doing.
These days, I eat when I’m hungry.
Then I stop thinking about food and get on with my day.
I rather like that.