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.