Back in the 1950s when Dr. Kelly Brownell was a young boy, snacking didn't really exist.
"Children ate three meals and maybe one snack," he says. And typically that snack occurred in one place: at home. "Nobody ate in their automobile. Maybe if you took a long trip, your parents would make sandwiches to bring along, but that would be about it," says Brownell, who's an emeritus professor of psychology at Duke University
Today kids' eating patterns look strikingly different. Children eat, on average, about three snacks a day today, eight nationally representative surveys found. Children eat nearly everywhere they go, and a large portion of their snacks are ultraprocessed foods.
Many parts of kids' lives have shifted since the mid 20th century. But, Brownell says, there's a major driver that's systematically reshaping families' eating habits.
Earlier this year, he and his colleagues at Harvard University and the University of Michigan published extensive evidence in The Milbank Quarterly that the ultraprocessed food industry intentionally shifted the social norms around families' eating habits. "So norm after norm after norm has been changed, and it doesn't mean that things have changed in a positive way," he says.
Many pediatricians, including the American Academy of Pediatricians, recommend toddlers to tweens eat about five times a day: three meals and about two snacks.
But this advice doesn't take into account the rise of ultraprocessed foods, says pediatrician Tamara Hannon at the Indiana University School of Medicine, who chairs the nutrition committee at the AAP. "The problem is what we know about child nutrition comes from studies with feeding kids no processed foods but fruits, vegetables, and whole foods. So foods that our grandmothers made," she says. "So the 'snacks' in these studies are really not what we, in our culture, consider snacks," Hannon adds.
It's time, Brownell and Hannon say, for pediatricians and parents to push back against these industry practices.
A world designed to trigger continual snacking
Throughout the 20th century, the ultraprocessed food industry used a series of tactics to make snacking throughout the day not only acceptable but even expected, says Ashley Gearhardt, who's a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and contributed to the new study.
First off, the industry launched marketing campaigns, often targeted to children, to turn all contexts in which parents used to say, "No," to eating into snacking zones. They sprinkled vending machines around communities – at schools, pools, parks and sporting events. They made ultraprocessed snacks available at gas stations, train stations and airports. "So now it's not just cake at birthday parties anymore. It's cake for breakfast; it's cake in the car after you go to the gas station. It's 24-7," she says.
Second, big food companies added preservatives to snacks so they don't spoil in your purse or in the car. They designed special packaging so snacks are convenient to carry around and quick to consume on-the-go. "That means you can have a purse full of snacks all the time that isn't going to go bad," Gearhardt says.
The result? "It has become so normal for children to constantly be snacking, snacking, snacking," she says. "This new normal is certainly a huge benefit to the food industry."
But it's probably not beneficial for many children. Studies have found that large, high-calorie snacks are associated with obesity in children ages 2 to 5, as is the consumption of ultraprocessed foods, in general. These snacks account for about half of the added sugar children consume. They also boost children's intake of saturated fat and sodium.
