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How snacks took over American life

Alex

By Alex
in Food Traditions & Culture

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Alex

Alex

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Article in the Atlantic

 

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There was a time, if you can believe it, when a respectable person could not have a little treat whenever she wanted. This time was, roughly, from the dawn of the republic to the middle of the 1980s. The American workday, menu, and social clock were oriented around meals, and eating between them was discouraged...

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Some 40 years later, we are not just eating between meals; we are abandoning them entirely. In the three decades leading up to 2008, the average American doubled their daily snack intake, and the percentage of adults snacking on any given day rose from 59 percent to 90 percent, according to a comprehensive government report. In the most recent iteration of the same study, which ended in 2020 before the pandemic, that number rose again, to 95 percent; more than half of respondents said they consumed at least three snacks a day.

 

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"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who's selling fear. -Mary Doria Russell, science-fiction writer

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Maison Rustique

Maison Rustique

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That's how I was raised. We just didn't get snacks. We got nice hearty, healthy meals and didn't feel the need to eat in-between. I still don't snack--unless it is suddenly 3 pm and I realize I didn't eat all day and am ready to keel over. Happens m ore and more frequently as I get older. I just don't feel hungry and forget to eat.

Deb

Liberty, MO

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munchymom

munchymom

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One cultural change not mentioned in the article was the massive reduction in the rate of smoking during the time period they're discussing. I don't know about you, but in the 80s and 90s I had a cigarette between classes or as a little break during work, and so did everybody else. I can't claim that I was healthier, but I definitely weighed less.

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"There is nothing like a good tomato sandwich now and then."

-Harriet M. Welsch

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