Packaged snack foods include:

Potato chips, tortilla chips, cereal snacks, pretzels, popcorn, cheese snacks, snack crackers, meat snacks, pork rinds, snack nuts, party mix, corn snacks, pellet snacks, fruit snacks, snack bars, granola, snack cakes, cookies.

Snacking has grown so much that kids now eat the equivalent of about five meals per day. (Adults eat 4.5).

Two decades ago, snacks made up only 11.3% of the average American’s daily calories. By 1996, it was 17.7%.

	Salty snack food consumption has doubled in the past 20 years.
	Snacking promotes obesity.
	50%+ of kids and teens eat when playing video or computer games, or doing homework (for many, it’s nonstop snacking).
	Kids snack off and on all day: After school, after dinner.
	Parents significantly underestimate how much their kids are snacking --often unaware of foods they buy in school vending machines and snack bars, convenience stores and fast food restaurants.
	Americans spend $32+ billion per year on snack foods.

The calories add up: Kids consume 150-200 more calories a day now than they did 10-15 years ago.

	Frequent snacking means kids eat one-third to one-half of a meal more per day than they did a decade ago. - Barry Popkin, Nutrition Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Snack foods are available and promoted everywhere -- including in schools, where they weren’t available 20 years ago.

	There are about 10 times more snack items today versus 20 years ago (2,000 items versus 250).
	Items considered occasional treats a generation ago are now seen as staples.
	Most packaged snack foods are high-fat, high-calorie, low-fiber and of minimal nutritional value. Most aren’t filling and do little to curb appetite.
	Snacking is “gaining momentum and appears to be getting worse.”

(Source: Alicia Moag-Stahlberg, registered dietician who developed a snacking survey for the American Dietetic Association.)

	40 baby carrots = one potato chip 28 licorice sticks = 1/3 caramel chocolate nut bar

Feeding Diabetes

Easily digested foods like chips, non-diet soda and other junk food require large amounts of insulin to metabolize.