Patricia Thompson - NUTRITION TALK MANY PERSONS see snacking as 'eating on the run', when they have no time to sit down to a meal. This varies from 'fast food', to some form of pastry, sweet or any type of finger food. But snacking should be a planned part of the total daily intake.
Snacking is associated with children, because their small stomachs makes it necessary for them to eat more frequently than adults who typically follow a three-meal-a-day pattern that is, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Parents look for easy to pack and easy to eat items that they feel children like which often means high-salt, high-fat and high-sugar items.
CHOOSING SNACKS
Snacks should really complement meals in providing any deficit in nutrients and calories not obtained from the main meals. Most meals will have foods from the Staple Food Group, foods from animals, fats and sometimes Vegetables. This means that the food group often overlooked are the fruits and legumes.
Fresh fruits therefore make appropriate snacks for all age groups since they will provide potassium, vitamin C, carotene (a form of vitamin A) and other antioxidant substances often lacking in main meals. Dried fruits can be used for added calcium and iron.
Because of our hot tropical climate, and the ready availability of commercial drinks many persons substitute juices for fresh fruits. Fresh fruit juices with the pulp retained will be comparable to the fruits but juices with sugar added could be providing more calories than desired and this will lead to overweight. One glass (eight ounces) of sweetened, fresh juice has twice the calories of the unsweetened fresh juice and four times the calories for one portion of the fresh fruit.
The legumes most used as snacks are the nuts and seeds. These can be useful additions for active persons needing the extra calories from the fat. Nuts provide useful contributions to our iron intake, and in the case of peanuts, the B vitamin, niacin. The calories from nuts and seeds vary from 136 for an ounce of soybean nuts or channa (from chick peas) to 218 for one ounce of macadamia nuts.
For persons with large appetites, the pistachio may be the best choice since it gives 60 nuts to the ounce compared with only 12 for the macadamia. Peanuts are middle of the road with about 30 whole nuts to the ounce.
POPULAR SNACK FOODS
Probably the most popular snack foods are crackers or biscuits. Plain crackers are primarily starch but sweet biscuits may have fat especially the sandwich types where two of these would have the equivalent of a teaspoon of fat.
Other snacks that are a combination of staple and fat are chips, chocolates and pastries. These snacks are best left for persons requiring only extra calories in their diet because they are active.
Milk-based drinks or dairy products such as yogurt and cheese are selected for their calcium and are therefore good choices for children and adolescents. The low-fat products with fewer calories should be selected by less-active persons. Various snack bars are available and these have the advantage of contributing fibre but the caloric values tend to be high.
On average, snacks provide 15 per cent of the total day's caloric intake, so for a 2000-calorie diet, snacks should not exceed 300 calories daily. Commercial snacks provide between 200 and 350 calories per serving. Lower calorie diets used by less active persons should favour fruits or other low-calorie snacks.
Patricia Thompson, Registered Nutritionist, The Nutrition Centre, Eden Gardens.
