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Louise Thomas
Editor
Over the past year, I’ve spent quite a lot of time examining my eating habits. Did I know what was going into my food? Was I buying too many takeaways? What tempts me the most? This deep dive into what I eat was largely prompted by the conversation and research around ultra-processed foods, which in recent months has become public enemy number one.
I like to think I eat fairly healthily, balancing out the occasional pub grub and instant noodles (Maggi, I’ll never give you up) with plenty of home-cooked food. After speaking to gut health guru Professor Tim Spector earlier this year for an article, I decided to see how many plants I ate within a week – in line with his advice about eating 30 plants a week. I felt smug for a few days after I counted 26 plants by the time Wednesday arrived.
But despite some positive changes I’ve made to my dietary regime – such as having at least one or two types of fruit or vegetables with nearly every meal and eating way, way more beans – there’s one area that I just can’t seem to change. Snacks remain a huge source of pleasure for me, but the thought of reaching for a raw fruit and nut bar instead of a chocolatey delight fills me with sadness.
Take, for example, the five raw fruit and nut bars I brought to a festival the other week. Past Kate thought to herself: “These will be great. They’ll give me energy and are really healthy, so it’ll be a good respite between all the terrible festival food.” Well, present Kate is looking at those same five bars still sitting in my fruit bowl today. I keep peeking at them furtively over the laptop screen, hoping they’ll disappear somehow without me having to eat them.
In contrast, the packet of chocolate-covered digestives in my cupboard barely lasted a week after I bought them. Frozen chocolate-covered fruit snacks are my current obsession. Crisps do not last long in my household, with both my husband and I getting through them in record time every time we buy a bag. If a rare packet of Haribo finds its way into our flat, it’s over – we’re fighting tooth and nail, or at least I am to make sure he doesn’t eat them all first.
But if I cut up a carrot into batons to snack on, I feel like I’m punishing myself. The part of my brain that links food to pleasure simply does not see it as rewarding, but instead boring and depressing. Why would I want to munch on a cucumber stick like a tortoise when I could dunk a lovely custard cream biscuit into my tea? Don’t get me started on abominable rice cakes, which are so dry and tasteless that they should be illegal. And anyone who claims to enjoy a protein bar – or, worse, a protein ball – is lying, I’m convinced of it.
Dr Frankie Phillips, dietitian with the British Dietetic Association (BDA), tells me that while snacking is part of a normal eating pattern for many people, it’s important to think about why we snack as well as what we snack on. I wish I could say that I snack because of hunger, but if I’m completely honest, most of my snacking is fuelled by boredom. I work from home most days and find myself staring into the fridge or my cupboards more often than I’d like to admit, just to get away from my screen for a few minutes.
The BDA advises that we snack because we are hungry, or before an exercise session, “not just because the food is there”, Dr Phillips says. She adds: “If there is an unhealthy snack you usually reach for, try not to buy it or keep it out of sight. Put something more nutritious where you can see it and you will be more likely to enjoy that instead.” But, as evidenced by the aforementioned raw fruit and nut bars currently in my sightline, this doesn’t always work. If I find the snacks so intensely unappealing, it becomes easy to ignore them and go rifling through my pantry for something I actually like instead.
I shouldn’t work my way through an entire packet of biscuits in one sitting, but maybe the real answer lies in understanding why I love certain types of snacks so much
This isn’t to say that I can’t ignore snacks completely. Much to the horror of some of my colleagues, it took me about three weeks to get around to eating the chocolate Easter egg my mother-in-law got me earlier this year. I still have a box of Cadbury Heroes from last Christmas, almost untouched, gathering dust on my bookshelf (don’t ask me why it’s there, it just is). I can go several days without craving a snack if I am simply not in the mood for them.
So where does that leave me? Dr Phillips’ advice is to choose snacks from a variety of food groups that provide valuable nutrients, and to plan ahead to make sure healthy snacks are still available when I want them. She also recommends not cutting out “less healthy” snacks completely, but instead limiting them to “treat sizes” for “special occasions”. I take it to mean I shouldn’t work my way through an entire packet of biscuits in one sitting, which is fair enough. But maybe the answer lies in understanding why I love certain types of snacks so much. Then I can work around this, rather than trying to force myself to like other, healthier alternatives.
Earlier this year, psychologists from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) found a circuit in the brain of mice that, when stimulated, pushes them to seek food even when they aren’t hungry. This same circuit also compels the mice to prefer food that is “pleasurable” rather than healthy. I find this very relatable indeed. Maybe I am a mouse? Alas, the researchers explained that they believe the circuit “causes the craving of highly rewarding, high-caloric food”. Because humans have a functionally similar region in the brainstem, they theorise that if the circuit is overactive in a person, they may feel more rewarded by eating or craving specific types of foods even when not hungry.
So I may not be a mouse, but it suggests that something in my brain compels me to guzzle crisps instead of carrots. That gives me some comfort, but I’m wary of declaring that it’s just not my fault I’m a snack fiend. It would be convenient to be able to wash my hands of my own snacking habits, but the only person who would be at a disadvantage is me. So I’ll keep trying to find a fruit and nut bar that I actually want to eat, and give carrot batons another chance. But I must beg snack makers to up their game. Please, for the love of god, stop making us choke down protein bars – they genuinely taste like sawdust and sadness. Healthier shouldn’t mean unpleasant.
