The Importance of Choosing Healthy Snacks for Your Overall Health

New research pre­sented at Nutrition 2023 at the annual meet­ing of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) explored the rela­tion­ship between snack­ing habits and car­diometa­bolic health.

The researchers ana­lyzed data from 1,001 United Kingdom-based par­tic­i­pants. They found that higher-qual­ity snack­ing, includ­ing con­sum­ing foods closely asso­ci­ated with the Mediterranean diet, was linked to bet­ter blood lipid and insulin responses.

According to Kate Bermingham, a researcher and study pre­sen­ter at ASN, the research was part of a more exten­sive study known as PREDICT, the largest per­son­al­ized nutri­tion study in the world.

“The aim of this snack­ing study was to answer key ques­tions relat­ing to whether the act of snack­ing per se is asso­ci­ated with unfa­vor­able car­diometa­bolic health out­comes or whether the qual­ity of snack foods is more impor­tant,” she told Olive Oil Times.

“To date, sur­pris­ingly lit­tle has been pub­lished on snack­ing despite it account­ing for 20 to 25 per­cent of energy intake, mak­ing this a valu­able resource paper which we hope will be of inter­est,” Bermingham said, adding that more than two-thirds of peo­ple reported snack­ing daily.

Simon Poole, a physi­cian and nutri­tion instruc­tor for the Olive Oil Times Education Lab, who was not involved in the study, agreed that the study’s results are fas­ci­nat­ing.

“The results appear to show that it is pos­si­ble to see dif­fer­ences in mark­ers of good health such as blood glu­cose, cho­les­terol, triglyc­erides, and insulin resis­tance based on peo­ples’ reported snack­ing habits,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“Higher-qual­ity snacks were asso­ci­ated with bet­ter results, even though the period of the study was only a few days.”

“We found that the amount you snack didn’t have a major impact on health,” Bermingham added. ​“It was the qual­ity of snacks that was linked with your health.”

The time that peo­ple snack is a crit­i­cal fac­tor; snack­ing late at night reduces overnight fast­ing time and is asso­ci­ated with unfa­vor­able blood sugar and fat lev­els. Snacking is an inde­pen­dent mod­i­fi­able dietary fea­ture that may be tar­geted to improve health.

According to Medical News Today, the study par­tic­i­pants were approx­i­mately 73 per­cent female, with an aver­age body mass index (BMI) of 25.6, clas­si­fied as slightly over­weight.

Data relied on self-report­ing of qual­ity, quan­tity and tim­ing. Participants self-reported car­diometa­bolic mark­ers, includ­ing blood lipids, glu­cose and insulin lev­els.

“High cho­les­terol lev­els and mark­ers of poor glu­cose metab­o­lism observed in this study with low snack qual­ity have been linked with an increased risk of heart dis­ease and type 2 dia­betes,” Poole said.

High-qual­ity snacks were foods con­tain­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of nutri­ents rel­a­tive to calo­ries. For the study, par­tic­i­pants mon­i­tored their snack intake over two to four days.

On aver­age, 95 per­cent of the par­tic­i­pants ate at least one daily snack. The aver­age of snacks per day was 2.28, mak­ing up about 22 per­cent of daily calo­ries.

“Many peo­ple believe snack­ing is an unhealth­ful dietary behav­ior,” Bermingham said. ​“This research addresses key ques­tions on whether snack­ing is asso­ci­ated with unfa­vor­able health out­comes or whether it is all about the qual­ity of foods eaten as a snack.”

“This work is par­tic­u­larly timely given the grow­ing habit of snack­ing, a huge vari­ety of snack foods on the mar­ket and the preva­lence of nutri­tion-asso­ci­ated dis­ease,” she added.

Poole said that while snacks con­tribute a small part of a person’s total dietary intake, they still have a tan­gi­ble impact on health mark­ers.

“Advertisers of poor-qual­ity processed snacks might encour­age con­sumers to believe that such ​‘treats’ can be part of a healthy lifestyle, but it is clear that reg­u­lar con­sump­tion can have neg­a­tive effects,” he said.

According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, snacks may be part of a healthy diet but can also lead to health prob­lems. Ideal snacks often fea­ture nutri­ent-dense snacks such as raw veg­eta­bles, fresh fruit, nuts and plain yogurt.

Harvard out­lines a self-directed process to incor­po­rate snacks into a meal plan and ensure snacks are work­ing ben­e­fi­cially in the over­all diet.

The steps involve self-reflec­tion and mind­ful­ness to under­stand the mech­a­nisms of snack­ing. Self-inquiry includes under­stand­ing when snack­ing occurs, why snack­ing occurs, what snacks are sat­is­fy­ing, and how much is enough to sat­isfy snack­ing urges.

Harvard describes the qual­i­ties of dif­fer­ent snacks by their char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as crunchy, creamy, sweet or savory. Within each qual­ity, con­sider nutri­tious snack selec­tions to sat­isfy a par­tic­u­lar qual­ity. For instance, crunchy snacks could include raw veg­etable sticks, nuts, seeds, whole grain crack­ers or an apple.

In addi­tion to qual­ity, snack tim­ing plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in blood glu­cose and lipid lev­els. The U.K. researchers found that con­sum­ing most snack­ing calo­ries after 9 p.m. was linked to worse blood glu­cose and lipid lev­els.

The researchers noted that snack­ing fre­quency, calo­rie count, or food quan­tity were not linked with any mea­sures of car­diometa­bolic health.

Snacks, espe­cially qual­ity snacks, can con­tribute to health and nutri­tion. Rather than being con­sid­ered a prob­lem­atic cat­e­gory, snack­ing can be reframed as a time to enhance nutri­tional qual­ity.

“There is noth­ing wrong with snack­ing when good qual­ity foods are con­sumed such as a piece of fruit, veg­eta­bles like car­rots or cel­ery dipped in hum­mus, a few olives or a hand­ful of unsalted nuts,” Poole said.

Poole shared his go-to com­bi­na­tion for a healthy snack as a Mediterranean diet spe­cial­ist.

“My favorite Mediterranean-style snack com­bines fresh berries, nuts, and seeds with Greek yogurt and a sprin­kle of nut­meg,” he said.

“This pro­vides a sat­is­fy­ing and tasty com­bi­na­tion of ingre­di­ents ben­e­fi­cial for glu­cose metab­o­lism, insulin sen­si­tiv­ity, and the gut micro­biome, with healthy fats ben­e­fi­cial for cho­les­terol lev­els as well as plenty of polyphe­nol com­pounds that have ben­e­fi­cial antiox­i­dant and anti-inflam­ma­tory effects,” Poole added.

This new research high­lights that snack­ing qual­ity is more impor­tant than the quan­tity or fre­quency of snack­ing.

“Advising the pub­lic to choose high-qual­ity snacks such as nuts over highly processed unhealth­ful snacks is likely ben­e­fi­cial,” Bermingham said. ​“Another impor­tant fac­tor is the tim­ing, with late-night snack­ing unfa­vor­able for health.”

“This may mean that uni­ver­sally, snack­ing late in the evening and inter­rupt­ing the overnight fast­ing win­dow is detri­men­tal to health,” she con­cluded.

• King’s College London
• Medical News Today
• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health