The Hindu : New Delhi News : Pre-dinner snacks leading to health problems

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 05, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Pre-dinner snacks leading to health problems

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI: If you want to stay healthy check your watch before you eat. According to a recently released report, pre-dinner snacking kills more than just the appetite for a wholesome dinner, leading to health related problems including high cholesterol levels.

A survey conducted in five major cities of the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, found that “tea-time-to-dinner-binge” was very high across all surveyed cities, especially among younger women. The study showed that highest intake of unhealthy snacking happened during the “pre-dinner period”.

A pan-India study looking into snacking among women and children by research agency AC Nielsen indicated that the highest intake of unhealthy foods -- noodles, chips, namkeen, pastas, biscuits/bakery products and a variety of snacks -- occurs during the pre-dinner period.

The study titled “Understanding snacking among women and children” released recently also found that unhealthy snacking was perhaps at its peak during the festive season. The comprehensive survey covered homemakers, working women (mothers) in the age group of 28 to 40 years, and children in the age group of 5 to 12 years belonging to middle and upper income households.

The study established that as the day progressed snacking gained momentum and reached its peak during the pre-dinner period. In the specific “pre-dinner binge” nearly 81 per cent of consumers in Delhi admitted to consuming snacks comprising mostly unhealthy food products. Second in line is Kolkata with an incidence of 73 per cent and Bangalore and Chennai having the least incidence of consuming a pre-dinner snack.

Karuna Chaturvedi of Apollo Hospital, Delhi, said: “Pre-dinner snacking is the result of our fast-paced lifestyle. However, if we make small changes in our eating habits and include easy-to-prepare healthy snacks like fruits, healthy soups, milk shakes with different fruits, kathi rolls with vegetable, paneer and other stuffing, healthy ‘bhel’, in the evening snack it can go a long way in helping us move towards a healthy eating pattern. Working mothers, however, have a bigger challenge.”

Leading nutritionist Niti Desai said: “Office-goers usually do not have healthy options available in office and settle for ‘vada-pau’ or ‘sev-puri’ or when reaching home will just eat whatever is easily available.”

Doctors also warn about increasing number of youngsters consuming high cholesterol fast food, adding that consumption of vegetables and fruits has come down and since there is very little fibre in the diet, the cholesterol stays in the blood without being eliminated.

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