Choosing healthy snacks for children and adults can be a real challenge, writes Sylvia Thompson.
Three out of four parents want their children to eat food that's good for them but find it challenging to choose healthy snacks, according to a European sample survey of consumer snacking behaviour.
When asked what snacks are nutritionally good for their children, parents chose milk, fruit, fruit juice and yogurt. They said cheese and bread, cereal bars, ice cream and ice pops were okay but defined crisps, cola drinks, chocolate, biscuits and chocolate-covered ice cream as unhealthy snacks. The survey questioned 750 consumers in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden.
The survey also examined adult snacking behaviour and found Germans are the most frequent snackers, having up to seven snacks a day (mainly pastries, carbonated soft drinks, fruit, fruit juice and yogurt). The Italians snacked least with fewer than three snacks a day (mainly bakery products, fruit and yogurt).
Although Ireland was not included in the survey, dietitians here suggest that Irish people are heavy snackers.
"A lot of people snack all day long and don't eat properly," says Margot Brennan from the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute. "The issue is whether they are snacking on the wrong type of snacks."
The survey on snacking, which was conducted by consumer products giant Unilever, also found many consumers are confused about what foods are the right ones to eat. Although almost half of those surveyed claimed to know how many calories different foods contained, a similar number claimed they weren't sure of the food choices necessary for a healthy balanced diet.
Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, director of food health and nutrition at Safefood, the Food Safety Promotion Board, says it is important to distinguish between snack food and treat foods. "Snacking in itself isn't wrong as life doesn't always work like clockwork but the trouble arises when people snack in desperation and choose the products that are marketed towards them."
Six months after the launch of Safefood's campaign to encourage people to view ordinary foods such as bananas and brown bread as "superfoods", Foley-Nolan says, "eight out of 10 people said the campaign helped them think more about the nutritional content of foods".
The Safefood campaign will be further developed to encourage people to snack on a scone or cheese and crackers or a low-fat, low-sugar yogurt rather than products such as cereal bars with high sugar content.
Foley-Nolan says: "What we need to do is encourage people to have a slice of brown bread and a cup of tea or a bowl of high-fibre cereal before they reach for other heavily marketed snack foods."
Speaking about why so many people remain nutritionally confused about what's good for them, she says: "It's partly because of how foods are marketed to them so they pick up something that is low in fat but high in sugar. But, it's also because we sometimes want to be confused about things that we don't want to deal with."
Marketing claims with inaccurate or incomplete nutritional messages will soon be banned as new European legislation on nutritional labelling comes into force. It is interesting then that a company such as Unilever chose to run a snack survey as part of its "nutritional enhancement programme" for ice cream.
The company claims it will only develop new ice creams for children which are 100 per cent free from artificial colours and flavours. It also claims to have reduced the fat and sugar content of many of its ice cream products.
"Consumer groups and legal constraints are forcing manufacturers into using natural ingredients which runs alongside more ethical corporate behaviour," says Roland Weening, director of HB ice cream in Ireland.
"Seventy per cent of European nutritionists agree that without pleasure foods such as ice cream, people don't have a chance of sticking to nutritionally balanced diets," he adds, somewhat tongue in cheek.
Speaking at the launch of Unilever's new range of ice cream for the European market in Stockholm, Sweden last week, Finnish nutritionist Ursula Schwab said: "Ice cream can easily be part of a health-promoting diet for children, providing it replaces energy-dense products with low nutritional value such as high fat bakery products or chocolate bars."
However, the National Dairy Council (NDC) says "ice cream is only suitable for an occasional snack food because it is high in calories and contains a lot of fat and sugar".
Hilda Griffin of the NDC says, "We promote the three-a-day campaign which recommends people include a glass of milk, a carton of yogurt and an ounce of cheese in combination with five to six portions of fruit and vegetables for a healthy balanced diet."