Healthy Snacks for Kids for Work for School for Weight Loss Tumblr for Kids at Scool Recipes: Healthy Snacking Healthy Snacks for Kids for Work for School for Weight Loss Tumblr for Kids at Scool Recipes for Teenagers Photos

Monday 13 October 2014

Healthy Snacking Healthy Snacks for Kids for Work for School for Weight Loss Tumblr for Kids at Scool Recipes for Teenagers Photos

Healthy Snacking Biography

source (google.com.pk)
Snacking does not have a concrete definition. A study taken by Katherine Chaplin and Andrew Smith from the journal Appetite says, “Participants defined snacking as food or drink eaten between main meals”.[1] As told in the textbook Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies by Frances Sienkiewicz Sizer and Ellie Whitney, sedentary men have a recommended daily calorie intake of about 2400 kcal. For sedentary women the intake is about 2000 kcal.[2] The average calorie intake during a meal is about 500 kilocalories leaving a range of 300-800 kilocalories for those snacks between meals. Overdoing this daily allowance can cause weight gain no matter if the snack is healthy or unhealthy.

Healthy snacking

There are five characteristics of healthy snacking. These characteristics are adequacy, balance, calorie control, moderation, and variety. Together, they work to build a nutritious diet. Adequacy consists of consuming the correct amount of essential nutrients, fiber, and energy daily. Having balance in a diet requires not choosing a certain nutrient group more than another nutrient group, but rather requires one to provide enough of all the essential nutrients. Calorie control is the amount of food required to maintain a healthy weight. Having moderation entails limiting intake of fat, sugar, and salt without total self-restraint. Variety in a diet causes an increase in adequacy and helps eating become a more pleasurable experience.[2]

A healthy snack is one that leaves a feeling of satiation and satiety. Satiation occurs when the brain acknowledges that enough food has been eaten.[2] There are triggers in the body that send these signals to the brain. Sizer and Whitney say a, “Greater exposure of the mouth to food triggers increased satiation. When the stomach stretches to accommodate a meal, nerve receptors in the stomach fire, sending a signal to the brain that the stomach is full”.[2] Healthy snacks are ones that leave the body feeling filled so that it does not continue to signal to the brain that it still wants food. Satiety occurs after a snack, suppressing hunger or regulating how often the body desires food. Choosing snacks that have high water content, are airy, high in fiber and protein causes stronger satiety signals making the time between meals longer. Fat triggers a hormone that increases satiety as well.[2]

Discretion should be used to determine whether one snack is a better choice than another based on nutrient density. The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) establishes the amount of nutrients required daily to avoid deficiencies and allow the body to function properly. Knowing that one snack has more nutrients than another per calorie can help provide required nutrients without exceeding the discretionary calorie allowance. When analyzing the ratio of nutrients to calories in foods, the caloric level must be lower than the nutrient level in order for it to be nutrient dense. Otherwise, it could potentially cause a deficiency in an essential nutrient.

In contrast to nutrient density, energy density is the amount of calories per gram of food.[2] For instance, snacking on two scoops (1 c.) of chocolate ice cream contains 287 calories per 132 grams making the energy density 2.17. As an alternative, one could have a snack containing celery (2 stalks), peanut butter (1 Tbsp), milk (1 c.), and an apple, which would contain similar calorie content (281 calories), but weigh 478 grams making the energy density .59. One could also have salads, fruits, nuts, frozen yogurt and cereal (1 c.) without milk. These foods help quite often especially when you're under pressure or frustrated. A low energy density is preferable because the food has a low ratio of calories to grams, allowing one to consume more food per calorie. Choosing the second snack with the lower energy density will increase the amount of food ingested which will increase satiation and satiety levels while increasing nutrient intake compared to the first snack option of chocolate ice cream.[2]

Snacking on foods low in energy density, high in nutrient density, and that follow the five characteristics of healthy snacking increase satiation and satiety. Sustaining a high level of satiation and satiety helps keep one in the caloric discretionary allowance, and helps one maintain a healthy body weight.

Consumer perception
There is a change in the attitude of individuals when they are told that a snack is either healthy or unhealthy. Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman noted that individuals generally believe that whether a snack is healthy or not is based on its calorie and fat content. A “healthy” food is thought to be one that contains a low number of calories, and an “unhealthy” food is thought to be one that contains a high number of calories. Adding to that, restaurants that claim they serve “healthy” foods sometimes lead their customers to believe that that means their food has low calorie content.[4] Noting the perception of individuals on the healthiness of foods, snacks are perceived similarly to other foods and can be regarded as healthy or unhealthy based on their caloric content. Polivy and Herman found, in a study they performed on the perceived healthiness of a snack, that if the snack was regarded as healthy the participants ate 35% more of that snack than when the snack was regarded as unhealthy

Healthy Snacking Healthy Snacks for Kids for Work for School for Weight Loss Tumblr for Kids at Scool Recipes for Teenagers Photos