Food Talk: What type of 'snacker' are you?

Snacking can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you snack on and how often you snack. Most of us enjoy a treat now and then, and the way things are going, the snack industry is unlikely to slow down.

Our snacking choices and habits are linked to factors such as our lifestyle. For example, someone who is busy and on the move is likely to snack differently than someone who is more sedentary.

We all like to have a snack in between or after our meals, and there are even categories of snackers based on their snacking habits. So which one are you? Well, read on to find out:

Guilty! The late-night snacker is very stealthy and usually goes unnoticed. She’s often great at having her meals on time so she will probably eat dinner early, but then later on, you will find her suspiciously hanging around the kitchen when everyone has gone to bed.

This type of snacking is sometimes connected to the comfort of having something sweet or warm before going to bed. The other reason is that they’re just hungry after having dinner hours earlier.

An emotional snacker is someone who uses food as a bandage for their emotions. Whenever they’re having a bad day or feeling stressed out for whatever reason, they have sweet and savoury besties who are always there for them.

This type of snacking can be dangerous because that attachment can turn into an addiction and soon, you could be inviting health problems from bingeing on unhealthy snacks all the time.

Many of us have been mindless snackers at some point. Maybe we even indulge every day. This is a snacker profile consisting of people who are too distracted to know how much snacking they’ve done, which can be a bad thing if you’re trying to track your calories.

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You might be a mindless snacker if you often find yourself grabbing some snacks when watching TV, having long conversations or even working. When you’re distracted, your mind will take that as a sign that you should be having a snack even though you just ate.

A mindful snacker is the opposite of a mindless snacker. This is the healthiest snacker because they’re more careful about what they eat and how often they have their snacks.

A mindful snacker is good at coming up with healthy snack ideas and making tasty homemade treats, and when they’re stocking up their kitchen, they will prioritize fruits over other unhealthy snacks.

The telltale sign of an all-day snacker is they will often have snacks as meals. For this type of snacker, snacks qualify as meals because they’re full from munching many times during the day anyway. They are more likely to have snacks stocked up in their pantries because they’ve basically become a necessity.