Amer­i­cans have a seri­ous love affair with snack­ing. Those of a cer­tain age might still define a snack as a quick mid­day grab for a Snick­ers bar or bag of potato chips.

Tra­di­tional daily eat­ing pat­terns are built around three “square and struc­tured” meals. Snacks were sup­ple­men­tal to those three squares.

This behav­ior is yield­ing to more mod­ern eat­ing styles char­ac­ter­ized by fre­quent snack­ing. These snack­ing events occur in a more unsys­tem­atic way and varies from per­son to per­son.

Snack­ing used to be about diver­sion, fun and indulging in food crav­ings. There is a shift toward health, well­ness, fresh and pre­mium snack foods.

Plea­sure is still a com­po­nent to snack­ing, but so are nour­ish­ment, opti­miza­tion and convenience.

Gro­cery mar­ket­ing has declared Feb­ru­ary as National Snack Food Month. Super Bowl Sun­day is just days away.

We are a nation of snack­ers, spend­ing over $60 bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally on those ever tempt­ing chips, crack­ers and other processed good­ies.

On the heels of those recently made res­o­lu­tions to eat bet­ter and cre­ate a life around health­ier imper­a­tives, take time for prepa­ra­tions. A month-​long snack fest requires some resis­tance, resolve and retool­ing.

Turn the tables on the media dri­ven snack food propo­si­tions. Favorite nib­bles can have a makeover that sat­is­fies every occa­sion. Don’t sup­port empty calo­ries and car­bo­hy­drates, sat­u­rated fats, high in sugar and pro­vide no nutri­tional value.

It’s hard to resist Dori­tos and Ruf­fles. Mod­er­a­tion is key in most food choices. Watch what goes in to the shop­ping cart for improv­ing the inevitable snack attacks. Look for desir­able alter­na­tives to the known cul­prits of over-​indulged behavior.

Pitch­ers and catch­ers reported for duty mid-​February to attend early work­outs.

Spring train­ing gives spec­ta­tors a rea­son to break free from winter’s grip and look for­ward to baseball’s open­ing day games.

Hall­marks of tra­di­tional base­ball game snacks are peanuts and Cracker Jacks. The worry for those suf­fer­ing from peanut aller­gies does not melt away when they go to a ball game.

Enjoy­ing America’s favorite pas­time is get­ting to be a bit friend­lier towards those with adverse reac­tions to roasted peanuts. Sev­eral ball­parks offer ded­i­cated whole seat sec­tions, suites or even entire game days devoted to no peanuts allowed.

While no sta­dium can tout being com­pletely “peanut-​free”, being “peanut con­trolled” gives fam­i­lies some mea­sure of assurance.