Have a bite? To health!

These are modern realities: we are used to doing everything quickly, forced to reckon with the modern rhythm of life. Whether we like it or not, snacking is becoming part of modern food culture. The fashion for fractional meals and calls to rely on the feeling of hunger, and not on the “legal” three meals a day, bring final chaos to our relationship with food. We turned to specialists to dot the i’s.

Unbearable lightness

Snacks are usually called snacks – chocolates, chips, a bag of crackers or nuts, glazed cheese … It is obvious that their notorious lightness is a very relative concept, since many of them can replace a full meal in terms of calories. Nutritionists are sure that there is a direct connection between fast food culture and excess weight: an excess of calories with a lack of nutrients and dietary fiber leads to such negative consequences as metabolic disorders, diabetes, cholesterol deposition in blood vessels.

As it is

Snacking with full knowledge of the matter or on the go putting your hand in a bag of chips – there is a fundamental difference here. In one case, we are aware that we are satisfying hunger, in the other we are simply mechanically satisfying the desire to chew something. “As long as we deny our cravings for snacking, these actions become automatic and the perception of hunger, the desire to eat something and satiety become indistinguishable,” explains Gerard Apfeldorfer, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders. “After all, we often don’t even notice how we ate a whole bag of chips. Snacking is more like an escape from oneself: when we are no longer able to think about anything because of fatigue, we start eating in front of the TV or reading something, thereby shutting ourselves off from pressing problems and reducing internal stress. When there is no perception of food consumption, an automatic habit develops: I get on the train and buy chips; I watch movies and eat popcorn – this is how eating disorders are formed at the level of perception, which leads to extra pounds. Therefore, those who oppose snacking on the spot are also right. A lover of a snack in his own interests is better off admitting it. What is the way out? Make snacking… part of your daily diet.

Don’t have time for a full break? This will not create problems for the figure and health, if you turn the complete absence of a regimen into a regulated fractional diet. “The essence of fractional nutrition is that food enters the body after a certain number of hours,” explains nutritionist Valentina Zimina, head of nutrition. Department of Clinical Nutrition of the Central Clinical Hospital. – The optimal interval is every three hours. For example, a light breakfast, lunch or dinner with snacks between them, consisting of fruits, herbs, kefir or low-fat cottage cheese. Unfortunately, in reality, snacking often comes down to the fact that a person neglects both the regularity and quality of food. Working without lunch with occasional snacks leads to the temptation to (finally!) eat well at night. For health, this option is not at all useful.

Is it really that bad to eat at night? For example, there is a strong belief that those who are trying to reduce their weight should not eat at all after six in the evening. “My clinical practice shows that such a regimen actually gives a very good effect,” says Valentina Zimina. “And for those people who are concerned not so much with weight as with health in general, it is better to have dinner no later than four hours before bedtime – otherwise we will have poor digestion (since all vital processes slow down at night) and poor sleep.”

And yet

No fractional nutrition relieves us of the need for hot food – our stomach needs it. “The most ideal food temperature for digestion is about 40 ° C, that is, similar to body temperature,” explains Valentina Zimina. – Then all digestive processes are optimized. But too hot food is harmful, its maximum temperature is 62 ° C. Soups are very useful for digestion. They are easy to digest, usually consist of vegetables and are low in calories. The introduction of soups into the daily diet is a kind of prevention of obesity, which, according to forecasts, threatens to become endemic.” And one more useful tip, equally relevant to both full meals and snacks: give up the habit of drinking food in order to unload the enzyme apparatus. “When you drink water, tea or other drinks with meals, they reduce the concentration of gastric juice,” continues Valentina Zimina. – Food takes much longer to digest, worse absorbed. This can be avoided by taking a short pause – half an hour – between meals and tea.

Food for the soul

In a word, having a snack, drinking a cup of tea or coffee is not at all harmful. (The main thing is not to discount the crackers, chips and chocolate bars consumed on the go with all their kilocalories.) However, you should not completely switch to express nutrition, even if the diet consists of exceptionally healthy foods. Another phenomenon associated with the spread of snacking is the so-called desacralization of food. The custom of gathering with the whole family for a meal, preceded by gratitude to God for daily bread, existed in many cultures, not only in Christian ones. This gives the process of eating additional meaning: food saturates not only our body, but also the mental, spiritual component. Therefore, despite the busiest schedule, it is worth at least once a day to arrange a full lunch or dinner for yourself, when the food is not consumed in a hurry, even savored – surrounded by loved ones, at a served table.

Are you hungry already?

The modern idea that eating should be guided by the feeling of hunger has a right to exist, says nutritionist Valentina Zimina. However, hunger and hunger are different …

There are two hunger signals. The first is when food leaves the stomach and it signals to us that it is hungry, in the sense of being empty. In this case, you can drink a cup of tea, a glass of kefir – and we will calmly endure this feeling. And another thing is when a person has a hearty breakfast and then does not eat for many hours (perhaps he is too emotionally or intellectually absorbed in his activities and simply forgets about food). Then the nutrients have already been absorbed into the blood and passed from the blood into the cells. In this case, it is the blood that signals that it is “hungry”: the blood sugar level drops. This is not the feeling of hunger that can be satisfied with a cup of tea. At the end of the day, getting home at ten o’clock in the evening, such a person begins to absorb everything until the brain gives a “stop” signal. And this, as a rule, happens already when all reasonable norms are exceeded – this is how overeating involuntarily occurs. This is harmful not only for digestion, but also for the body as a whole. Therefore, we can say that eating according to the regime is a more realistic approach, if you take into account the health benefits.

V. Z.