There Is No Such Thing As A Healthy Snack

“According to data from the Continuing Surveys of Food Intake by Individuals, conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 90% of Americans’ increased calorie consumption since 1977 has come from increased between-meal eating. Calories consumed at meals have stayed about the same.” – Reinhard Engels

If you were to look for one single factor that has lead to the explosion of fatness around the world, you may have to look no further than the statistic from above. According to this source, 90% of increased calorie consumption over the past 30 years (around the same time span of the dramatic increase in obesity) has come from increased between-meal eating. In other words, the single most significant behavior that seems to have caused the fatness is, snacking.

Snacking is a very new phenomenon and boy is it making people fat. People often say that the cause of obesity is an over-abundance of food, or an over abundance of sugar in those foods. But generations before us had the same or very similar conditions – and they didn’t get fat. The big difference between the generations however, is snacking.

There is no such thing as a “healthy” snack

Let me point this out to you now. Snacking is a gluttonous behavior unless of course, you are an animal that is designed to graze. A cow would be an example. But humans are not cows. We are not grazers. We are intermittent eaters. We are supposed to eat a meal and then stop until our next meal. That’s how we are designed.

Over the past 30 years or so, we have been tricked out of this natural rhythm due to the advent of “healthy” snacks. We should eat snacks, the food industry tells us, because they are good for us and will make us healthy.

What complete and utter nonsense.

Firstly, in nature there is no such thing as “healthy” food. There is either food that you can eat, or there is food that you can eat. We learn very quickly which is which and any food that you can eat, is good. The term “healthy” food is simply a marketing gimmick that has no meaning whatsoever.

We live in a time of manufactured non-foods. Manufacturers of these non-foods have played a trick on us and have made these non-foods very appealing. They fill them with specific additives and chemicals that hit pleasure centers of our brains, disguising the fact that they are not food at all, and making us run back for more.

But they are not food at all, and labeling them “healthy” is just a ploy to get us to eat them. And it works.

Not only is there no such thing as a “healthy” food in nature, there is also no such thing as “snack”. Food must be gathered, hunted, prepared, cooked, and then finally eaten. This process takes time and effort. Snacking does not even come into the equation. It’s unheard of, and so much so that in France the word for snacking is “le snacking”.

It’s only been in the last 30 years that snacking has been introduced. It’s true that the world has an overabundance of food, so what’s the easiest way to get people to eat it? Make in-between eating a fashionable thing to do. How do you make eating fashionable? Call it healthy. The result? A lot more consumption.

BINGO!

BUT, there is no such thing as a healthy snack. Don’t think that eating vegetables, fruit, nuts or “healthy” bars in-between meals is good for you. It’s NOT. It’s gluttony at the highest level no matter what you are eating. If you are a baby then its forgivable, but other than that its just a first class ticket to fatty-land.

Don’t be a fool. Your not supposed to eat between meals. If you do you are being tricked into doing so. As the saying goes “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”. Cut the snacking habit, and return to eating like a proper human being.