Categorization of foods as “snack” and “meal” by college students

Estimating food portions. Influence of unit number, meal type and energy density

“…For the breakfast cereal with milk, the cereal was presented in a breakfast bowl and the milk in a tall glass (6 cm diameter, 13 cm depth). To decrease variability between subjects in their interpretation of the food item as meals or snacks (Wadhera & Capaldi, 2012) each item was labelled to indicate whether it should be considered a meal, a beverage or a snack depending on the suitability of that food at the time of the test, which was always at lunch time. Five of the 33 foods were of very low energy density (ED) (0–2.5 kJ/g), 10 foods were of low ED (2.5–6.3 kJ/g), 9 foods were of medium ED (6.3–16.7 kJ/g), and 9 foods were of high ED (>16.7 kJ/g) (Rolls & Barnett, 2000).…”

Association between meal intake behaviour and abdominal obesity in Spanish adults

“…However, when eating frequency was evaluated separately defining meals and snacks, only the latter was positively associated with BMI, whereas eating snack food also has been homogeneously found to be associated with weight gain (Howarth et al, 2007;Mesas et al, 2012). Thus, differentiating between meals and snacks might be of importance to obtain explicit results as the quantity and, moreover, the quality of the food ingested may vary when perceiving an eating occasion as meal or as snack (Wadhera & Capaldi, 2012;Wansink, Payne, & Shimizu, 2010). On the other hand most previous studies do not consider AO as an independent health indicator.…”

“…Another possible explanation might be that the afternoon meal -perceived as a meal -might affect the subsequent eating occasion. It has been shown that individuals who consider an eating occasion a meal rather than a snack consume less in the following eating occasion even though the food eaten was the same (Wadhera & Capaldi, 2012;Wansink et al, 2010). The meal following the afternoon meal is dinner, which might be a critical meal as most of the energy taken during the day is consumed in this late eating occasion (Howarth et al, 2007), which therefore has important metabolic consequences.…”

“…Both are underexplored due to the lack of differentiation within the eating occasions (meal vs. snack). As both eating occasions are perceived as meals their consequences over the food intake (Keller, Rodríguez López, Carmenate Moreno, & Acevedo Cantero, 2014) and their quality and quantity (Wadhera & Capaldi, 2012;Wansink et al, 2010) may differ from snacking, and therefore they might be associated with different health indicators. Hence, the present study aims to evaluate the association between AO and MIB such as forenoon meal, afternoon meal and snacking between the regularly taken meals in Spanish adults.…”

Snacking on Television: A Content Analysis of Adolescents’ Favorite Shows

“…Findings may therefore not apply to all shows that youth favor. Second, snacking is difficult to define; the type of food, the quantity of food consumed, the time of day it was consumed, and other factors contribute to the interpretation of whether the food eaten was a snack or a meal (28,29). Although interrater reliability was high for this item (κ = 0.98 in both batches) and television content creators rely on easily interpretable cues to establish a scene (eg, a set table to indicate a meal), viewers may understand eating instances differently, on the basis of their experiences.…”