In nutritional terms, the concept of snack is used to refer to those small snacks or products that can be used to calm the appetite between meals. Snacks can be very varied and composed of different nutrients, but their main characteristic is that it is an inferior food in terms of size and caloric intake to a more abundant food or meal. The word collation is also used to designate those events in which, precisely, small amounts of food are served such as canapés or some other type of food.
Snacks have been established relatively recently in the nutritional world as the essential aid to carry out an orderly and reasonable diet. Snacks are made to prevent a person from arriving at a meal (for example, a lunch or a snack) with great hunger and consuming at that time a quantity of food greater than expected for their physical build.
Thus, snacks are supposed especially for the intermediate moment between one meal and another (for example, breakfast and lunch) and can be consumed two or three times a day. However, an essential element for a meal to be considered a snack is that it must serve simply to entertain the stomach, not to give complete satisfaction.
Examples of snacks can be fruits or vegetables, cereal bars, suitable portions of cookies or some bread, yogurt, cheese slices, cold cuts or even raw eggs. All of them can be consumed separately between food and meal. Ideally, according to nutritionists, vary the order of snacks and not always repeat them in order to avoid boredom and inappropriate consumption of certain nutrients over others. Today, the market offers endless possibilities in terms of snacks due to the fashionable status of healthy eating.
