Gone are the days when chips and cookies were just for munching while watching TV. For some consumers, snacks have now become entire meals, defying decades of health advice. Now, almost half of U.S. consumers have three or more snacks daily—up 8% in the last two years, according to market research firm Circana Group as cited by the Wall Street Journal Monday. And the younger generation—mainly millennials and Gen Z, from teens to people in their early 40s—are likely driving this soaring phenomenon.
“Millennials took something that had a negative connotation with older generations—parents would tell you ‘don’t snack and spoil the meal’—and turned snacks into the entire meal itself,” Andrea Hernández, author of Snaxshot, an online newsletter focused on food and beverage trends, told the Journal.
Snacking has been around for a long time, and currently accounts for 22% of the energy intake among U.S. adults. A rise in video gaming and in food prices is said to be responsible.
The change in food choices is partly attributed to high inflation, which may be causing people to buy lower-cost food. Krogers, the largest U.S. grocery chain by sales, told the Journal that it was selling more boxes containing smaller snack bags inside to appeal to the growing snacker base.
“Eating occasions have become slightly more evenly spread out throughout the day, shifting consumption away from mealtimes,” said a February report that analyzed eating patterns in the U.S. in 2022 by the Hartman Group, a research consultancy. “The decline in meal occasions witnessed in 2021 persisted in 2022, as consumers have shifted to more frequent snacks, with fewer items per occasion.”
Forty-nine percent of consumers in 2023 are looking for snacks in multiple packs, up 8% a year ago, for various reasons like saving money and controlling intake portions, according to Circana.
“You’ve started to see the ‘snack-ification’ of everything,” Hernández told the Journal.
Snacking is global, according to international food brand Modelez. The company found patterns within snacking—such as a 42% rise in snacking between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. in 2021 compared to 2013, driven by Gen Z and millennials. Within this group, particularly women worldwide were more likely to snack in the early hours of the morning or skip meals, according to Mondelez’s 2022 State of Snacking survey published earlier this year.
Nick Graham, global head of insights and analytics for Mondelez, told the Journal that millennials and Gen Z consumers typically eat about 10% more snacks daily compared to other generations.
Mondelez also found that between 2020 and 2022, there was at least a 10% increase in people replacing breakfast, lunch and dinner with snacks.
Junk food has negative health effects linked to obesity and diseases like diabetes. About 20% of the children aged 19 and under are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And snacking, in particular, can result in unwanted weight gain and the absence of nutrition-rich meals.
