Gregg's Blog - Snacking

I really am troubled by the amount of snacking we do in this country. I’m not the only one either.

According to studies over 25% of the calories consumed in the UK come through snacking! Come on now! How crazy is that?

Walk down the supermarket aisles and look at the variety and the quantity of the snacks. Does that not trouble you in anyway? The next time you stop for petrol or the next time you go into your local shop have a look around you.

We have rising rates of obesity in the UK and rising rates of snacking. Surely you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to link these two things together.

Snacking is now no longer a treat, if it ever was one, I’ve never considered it to be a treat. Well maybe when I was a child.

Snacking is now how we eat on a day by day basis. We don’t stop and eat three proper big meals. We grab as we go, never feeling fulfilled always feeling hungry and therefore continuing to grab or graze throughout the day. This really scares me.

Just a quick explanation on what is happening here. We eat because we’re hungry right? So what used to happen was we would get hungry and we would eat a meal, that meal would keep us full for a few hours until the next meal.

Now what’s happening in the morning is we may be reaching for a pastry or some toast. This doesn’t fill us up, so mid morning we’re looking for a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps.

Come lunchtime we have nothing planned so we grab a sandwich and maybe some more crisps. Mid afternoon we are now hungry again and we are looking for more snacks.

Dinner time we have nothing planned so again we are just grabbing at stuff that doesn’t fulfil us. What happens then? We start snacking again in front of the television at night. On and on in a never-ending cycle of snacking.

What is happening when we are snacking at this level is we are not consuming enough food to fill us up, but we are consuming a tremendous amount of calories. A chocolate bar could well be over 240 cals and weigh less than 30 g. That’s too many calories for such small amount of food in weight. Biscuits, crisps or chocolate. All of these high in calories low in nutrition and not a great deal of weight to keep us full.

At the start of this I told you the scary fact that over 25% of the calories we consume in the UK and now through snacks. If you are looking to lose weight reduce the snacks.

I’m not suggesting you go hungry. I want you to replace the calorific low nutrition snacks for low calorie nutritious fulfilling real food.

There are so many delicious foods, so many delicious natural ingredients. All colourful and bright and good for you. Produced by mother nature to give you Nutrition and keep you healthy.

If you would like to learn more, please do read the free info at GreggWallace.Health.