Snacking between meals is one of the culprits of overweight and obesity. Much research into snacking focuses on snacking as a reasoned behavior. But snacking is often not reasoned at all:we also snack impulsively out of habit or out of emotion. Research, but also interventions aimed at teaching healthy eating behavior take little or no account of this. Saskia Wouters, lecturer and researcher at the Open University, investigated this impulsive snacking behaviour. She did this with the help of the Snackimpuls smartphone app.
The Snackimpuls app asks users a number of questions ten times a day for 7 consecutive days, at random times. Those questions are about their mood at that moment, the situation they are in, and their eating and drinking behavior since the last beep. This resulted in almost 15,000 reports that provide a detailed picture of the participants' emotions, stress and snacking behaviour. The results were analysed, taking into account demographic characteristics such as gender, age and education level.
The research shows that men snack less when they are not feeling well (negative mood). This phenomenon does not occur in women, but they also stop snacking when they are not feeling well. Men and young adults (20-30 years) actually snack more when they do feel good. Furthermore, low to intermediately educated people appear to snack out of habit. The stronger the habit, the more snack intake (kcal).
It was also investigated whether snacking also makes you feel better and, if so, whether nutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) can explain this effect. The study shows that when people have snacked in response to daily stressors, their negative mood is slightly lower than when they have not snacked. Snacking therefore somewhat dampens the negative feeling. This damping effect is not found in the investigated nutrients. On the contrary:the amount of carbohydrates consumed actually has a reinforcing effect on the negative affective stress reactivity. The more carbohydrates you have consumed since the previous beep, the higher the negative mood in response to event-related stress. No effect was found for fats and proteins. The research shows that when stimulating healthy eating behavior it is important to look not only at cognitive determinants, but also at habits and emotional situations.
