Firstly,what is a snack?

A snack is an item of food eaten between meals.

Most people love snacks and take them as food too and not just between meals and I must say I'm one of them too.

Snacks have a considerable unexpected negative effects in our body when we take them so it is advisable to reduce our daily intake of it.

It is only until recently in human history that we started taking our three square meals and snacks in between them. Until recently breakfasts didn't even exist as a meal as the ancient humans such as the Romans and Greeks consuming just one meal and that was just after midday. It was industrialization and recent early schedules that brought about breakfast and structured mealtimes to sustain hardworking labourers and workers and by the end of the eighteenth century eating three squared meals have widely spread all over the world.

But recently people are eating and consuming meals more than ever before and even eating meals in between meals and that has brought snacking to a very high consumption. New data have suggested that we now have erratic eating patterns and we spend more than fourteen hours of the day well fed because we continue snacking and don't eat at definite times.

Some of the effects of continuous and excessive snacking are highlighted below.

The transient inflammatory response

Our bodies have two different metabolic states: the fasted which is without food and the post fed which is just after eating. The post fed is when the body absorb nutrients and also the time of immune system activity.

When we eat, we don't just take in Important nutrients but we trigger our immune system to produce a "transient inflammatory response".

Inflammation is a normal body response to sickness or hurt or injury or disease, it's an automatic response to protect our body against external bodies...so the act of eating triggers this inflammatory response automatically and causes physiological stress on the immune system,so to those snacking all day long are putting their bodies in a constant state of inflammation which affects the immune system.

Four hours after we eat each meal there are tiny microbes in our gut that comes out to act on the food items and these microbes are what triggers the immune system into inflammation and this is largely caused by the hormone "inflammasone" that is highly sensitive to nutrients and releases the inflammatory molecule "interleukin-1beta".

Inflammation is supposed to be a short term process of immune system activity but the constant snacking makes it sometimes last a whole day which is largely detrimental to the body.

Postprandial inflammation which is the inflammation cause after eating has increased significantly as a result of our snacking which are usually calorie filled, excessive fructose and saturated fats.

This postprandial inflammation caused by excessive eating can be highly detrimental over time and is related to heart diseases and diabetes.

Eating less is more beneficial than eating more as it makes you loss weight and fats and reduce your risks of having metabolic diseases.

Increased cholesterol,glucose levels and increased insulin resistance.

The regular and consistent eating of snacks,which are highly packed with calories, fructose and saturated fats increases your cholesterol and glocuse levels and this two are the main causes of heart diseases and diabetes and also sometimes kidney diseases and these can be really life threatening and can be chronic. The high calories iand the saturated fats in snacks,if not exercised and burnt can increase body fat and weight to a very high extent that put you at risk to heart diseases because of the consistent deposit of fats in the adipose tissues.

When we eat most of these snacks,we don't exercise to burn those excess calories from our body and with time it is accumulated till it is excessive and when something is excessive,it becomes bad.

It also increase your body's insulin resistance which leaves you very hungry the next day.

So instead of eating more times in a day,why not reduce your meals and make them specific and healthier, also increase the times between your meals to 10hours or more and also eat earlier in the night than eating late nights and your body will definitely thank you for it.

Say no to excessive snacking today and leave healthier.