Is snacking needed or is it bad for me?

Snacking is an optional dietary requirement. While many myths and mix-ups are surrounded around snacking such as:

• You need to eat every two to three hours to keep your metabolism revved up.
• Snacking will help keep your blood sugar levels steady.
• Snacking will lead to increase weight gain.

All of these often heard points are simply not true, but misinterpretation of true facts.


Eating more often does not boost your metabolism. It is stated that by eating more often in the day you prevent your body from going into “starvation mode”. During “starvation mode” your body adjusts its metabolism to slow down to conserve energy and burn fewer calories. While this might have partial truth to it, your body does not go into starvation mode after only a few hours without food.
Your blood sugar naturally rises after a meal and then slowly falls back to baseline as the glucose is taken up by the cells of the body for energy. Having this natural rise and fall of blood sugar is natural and good for you (as long as it does not fall to low). This is why to measure your blood glucose level you are to not eat for 12 hours to see what its baseline is. Going more than 3 or 4 hours without food for a healthy non-diabetic individual is not harmful for you.

Snacking will only lead to increase weight gain if it adds to increase overall calorie intake for the day based on your metabolism needs. If you eat less for your regular meals to compensate for the snacking calories then you will not gain weight.

Snacking is fine to do as long as it doesn’t lead to increasing your overall calorie needs for a day and is made up of healthier foods. But it is not required either for a healthy diet.