The New Way Americans Are Snacking

Despite the best efforts of food activists like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan to write with passion and purpose on the benefits of the ritual of the family sit-down, the American idea of dinner may be cooked: Consumers are snacking more and increasingly are eating snack foods along with their main meals.  In fact, the experts at the global information firm The NPD Group predict that snack foods eaten at (or as) a main meal will grow by approximately 5% over the next five years to $86.4 billion by 2018. (Current North American snack sales overall are estimated at $124 billion, according to Nielsen research.)

What’s interesting about the current phenomenon is what, as well as how, Americans view the nosh. According to Darren Seifer, a food and beverage industry analyst at NPD, “Attitudes around snacking have changed: In the 1980s, 70% of people said they tried to avoid snacking entirely; today only 40% of reported doing so.  When we ask what their motivation is about half of the time they say it’s to satisfy a ‘functional’ need, such as health, or simply because they were hungry. The other half of the time it’s emotional, such as ‘I had a craving.’” The positive result for those in that functional zone: an uptick in choosing healthy options like fruit or yogurt.

America’s new favorite snack food. Really?

Clearly, the lines between snacking and meals have blurred, which leads to an interesting question: If healthier snacking throughout the day instead of eating 3 squares is the new meal normal, have consumers unwittingly cracked the weight loss code? Seifer is doubtful: “If people start choosing healthier snacks and having main meal foods during snack occasions, are they going to give up their main meals? Typically, we find they don’t want to give up the meal. Really, it’s all about balance.”

Bad news for waistlines, but good news for the food industry. Manufacturers are ready to meet consumers’ meals-in-flux mentality if you consider the latest from Stouffer’s, a Nestlé’s brand and category leader for its frozen entrees such as Healthy Choice: mac and cheese snack cups to jumpstart an afternoon slump. Or consider Kellogg K -1%’s flavored waffle bars in portable pouches and ConAgra’s 220-calorie microwaveable bowls of lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs as your next mid-morning or afternoon snack.

Many experts have tried to explain the reasons and rationale behind this snacking mentality (increasingly fragmented work- and lifestyles, more people commuting and an overeating population), as well as its fallout (more people eating solo, disconnected and overweight families, and a generation that defines cooking as plating a store-bought rotisserie chicken). Recent statistics from leading market research firms provide a harried snapshot of hungry consumers:

• A survey of 1,139 people by Nielsen found that 91% of adults snack at least once a day, including 25% who say they snack 3-5 times a day and 3% who claim to be always nibbling.
• According to a 2013 report from The Hartman Group, 48% of respondents replace meals with snacks at least 3-4 times a week.
• As many as 30% of Americans reported eating a frozen entrée as a snack, according to a 2014 report from Mintel.  The report also found 41% of 25- to 34-year-olds surveyed were even more inclined to do so.

Speaking of that much-coveted millennials demo, they have taken snacking to the selfie level, bringing a fourth-wave sensibility to the second-wave feminist battle cry that the personal is political. Snackwave was coined by two writers on TheHairpin.com to embrace an aesthetic. The authors explain “it’s a term we’ve coined to describe the current Internet phenomenon of young women and teenage girls expressing an obsession with snack food.”  Basically, snacks become a stand in for or a way of expressing the online self. But using the snacky descriptives and metaphors isn’t just about empty calories. The writers contend that women owning up to their love of classic, diet-unfriendly foods like burgers, ramen, burritos and pizza, is their way of showing control in a culture that praises thinness and prizes, above all, that women appeal to men.

Very Internet 3.0 (to quote the Snackerwavers) and perhaps as good a way as any for Americans to work through their food issues.