You’re probably eating a meal’s worth of snacks every day

For many adults, the average daily calories from the snacks they eat are the equivalent of a meal, results of a recent study show.

Researchers looked at 2005-2016 data for nearly 24,000 U.S. adults and found that they averaged about 400-500 calories from snacks a day. In many instances, that was more calories than they consumed at breakfast.

“Snacks are contributing a meal’s worth of intake to what we eat without it actually being a meal,” says senior study author Christopher Taylor, a professor of medical dietetics at Ohio State University. “You know what dinner is going to be: a protein, a side dish or two. But if you eat a meal of what you eat for snacks, it becomes a completely different scenario of, generally, carbohydrates, sugars, not much protein, not much fruit, not a vegetable. So it’s not a fully well-rounded meal.”

The participants who had Type 2 diabetes ate fewer sugary foods and didn’t snack as often as those without diabetes or who had prediabetes. 

“Diabetes education looks like it’s working,” Taylor said, “but we might need to bump education back to people who are at risk for diabetes and even to people with normal blood glucose levels to start improving dietary behaviors before people develop chronic disease.”

The study was published online in PLOS Global Public Health.