To snack or not to snack, that is the question.

The food confusion is real - and within good reason. For a while snacking became trendy with the whole “5 small meals/day” thing. Recently, intermittent fasters will tell you to “just cut down your eating window so there is no time to snack”. What’s the correct answer?

Well, as always with food and nutrition, there is no one size fits all. For some people, 3 solid meals in a shorter eating window works well. For others, they need more consistent energy throughout the day. As a general rule of thumb, I don’t think we should be going further than 4 hours in between our meals and snacks. When we go too long without food midday, a few things happen. First, our blood sugar drops. When our blood sugar is low we get a craving for quick energy, aka carbs. Next, when we go for those quick carbs, we eat really quickly since we are starving, and when we eat quickly, we tend to eat much more than we initially would have. Given that most of us go longer than 4 hours between lunch and dinner, most of us can benefit from a snack.

Now that we established I am pro-snacking for most, the question begs “what the heck do I snack on?”. Somewhere along the way we got caught up in the idea that snacks get to be a different kind of food. Typical snack food comes in colorful plastic packaging and are not things you would consider at a meal. Instead, I want you to go for real food snacks. This means that you are choosing snack foods that don’t come in a package and are not advertised to you as snack food. Since most of us are at home these days, so long are the days when you need a non-perishable snack on the go. Instead, let’s use our fridge and pantry access to our advantage and choose real food snacks.

The perfect snack formula

Normally when we look at meals, there are 3 components that you should try to get in: protein, fat & fiber. Given snacks are smaller, I want you to try to balance your snacks by getting in at least 2 out of the 3 components. This ensures that your snack is nutritionally balance and satiating, meaning it will hold you over until dinner.

Protein: hard boiled eggs, turkey jerky, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, black beans, chickpeas, cheese, etc.

Fat: avocado, peanut/cashew/almond butter, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, olive oil, cheese, etc.

Fiber: apple, berries, pears, carrot sticks, celery sticks, beans/legumes, etc.

Note: some foods fit into multiple categories. For example, chickpeas are a protein and a fiber, so you don’t necessarily need to add something else to balance them. On the other hand, an apple alone is just the fiber component, so you want to add some nut butter to make it a well rounded snack. Cheese is one that fits into the protein and fat category, really it depends on the cheese you are choosing. But a slice of cheese or a piece of string cheese with some nuts or a small piece of fruit is a good balance. There is no perfect here, this is just simplified to give you some ideas!