Snack Time: All the Time?

Jeremy Hobson (@jeremyhobson), co-host of WBUR’s program Here and Now (@HereAndNow) delivered an interesting interview with Michael Moss (@MichaelMossC), author of Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us about sophisticated steps manufacturers take to reach the “bliss point,” where engineered foods hit the sweet spot of prompting involuntary continued consumption.

Moss points out that “there was a day in the 1980s where suddenly it became socially acceptable to eat anything anywhere anytime.” This was probably helped along by the American Dietetic Association’s (now the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics) industry-funded insistence that “eating right” was the only thing that mattered—disregarding the importance of snacking and meal frequency. Instead of avoiding snacking, parents and schools started encouraging kids to snack as if the human brain could not function without fuel coming from the gut. It’s important to note this change in attitude and its origin, but just recognizing the problem offers little in the way of preventive or corrective measures.

Reducing the engineered foods’ effects on our appetite and fighting the compelling commercials is tough for both children and adults, and that’s where the tools in  AC: The Power of Appetite Correction offer advantages. For example, a daily cycle of intermittent fasting with eating restricted to a window of five hours makes it much easier to avoid snacking to begin with, so finding the willpower to stop after an appropriate amount is no longer a problem.