Updated 19th February 2026
7 gut-friendly snacks that won't destroy your diet with Prof. Sarah Berry
Share this article
Snacks make up a quarter of what most people eat. Yet most of us never question them.
In this episode, Prof. Sarah Berry, ZOE’s Chief Scientist, explains why snacking is not the problem and how seven snack swaps can lower cholesterol, support gut health, and reduce heart disease risk.
Most snacks are high in sugar, salt, and saturated fat, and many carry “health” claims that hide this. Sarah breaks down how to spot this, explains what makes a good snack, and why snack timing matters.
You’ll walk away with seven simple snack ideas that help improve cholesterol, blood sugar, and heart health in weeks.
If you’re a snacker, this may be the easiest way to improve your diet.
🌱 Try our science-backed and tasty wholefood supplement Daily 30+
Get our brand-new app and Gut Health Test designed by world-leading gut health and nutrition scientists to build healthy eating habits 👉 Join ZOE
Follow ZOE on Instagram.
The crunch your gut’s* been craving.
Support gut health* and energy* and enhance the flavor and crunch of your meals.
Transcript
Jonathan: Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sarah: Pleasure. I'm so excited to talk about one of my favorite topics.
Jonathan: Which is, of course, snacking. So I have a bunch of questions from our listeners, so why don't we jump straight into it with the Q and A. Is snacking always bad for you?
Sarah: No.
Jonathan: If a snack says "natural" on the label, does that mean it's healthy?
Sarah: No.
Jonathan: Does it matter when you snack?
Sarah: Yes.
Jonathan: Is chocolate always bad?
Sarah: No.
Jonathan: Could I snack and make myself healthier?
Sarah: Yes.
Jonathan: And finally, what's the biggest misconception that you've heard about snacking?
Sarah: The biggest misconception, in my opinion, about snacking is that having multiple snacks throughout the day is bad for your health, bad for your waist, bad for your weight.
Jonathan: And that's not true.
Sarah: That's not true.
Jonathan: Well, that is already good news.
Sarah: It does depend, Jonathan, on the snack, but we can dive into that.
Jonathan: All right, well, I imagine we are going to get into that. Now, I think like many of our listeners, honestly, I'm constantly thinking about a snack, and I'm also constantly feeling guilty about it because I can hear my grandmother saying, "Jonathan, you'll ruin your dinner if you eat that." So in my mind, snacking is definitely like a bad thing. And I know you've been conducting some very large-scale research on snacking, Sarah, so I'm really excited to find out just how guilty I should feel. How common is snacking?
Sarah: So snacking is really common, particularly in the UK, in the US, but many, many countries rely on snacks for a huge proportion of their calories. In the UK and the US, we see that about 95% of people have at least one snack a day, and by snack, what I mean is an eating event between a main meal. So I mean an eating event that isn't your breakfast, your lunch, or your dinner. What we also see is that 25% of our energy, that's a quarter of our calorie intake, comes from snacks in the UK and the US, and there's quite similar statistics in many other countries. That's enormous.
Jonathan: That's crazy. A quarter of like all the energy I get from my food comes from snacking.
Sarah: On average. Obviously, it differs from one person to the other. So let's put in that context of actually how many calories. Let's assume again, the average person consuming 2,000 calories a day, that's 500 calories are coming from snacks.
Jonathan: So it's almost like that's a fourth meal of the day.
Sarah: But often it's spread through multiple eating events. So multiple occasions where we are consuming these snacks.
Jonathan: And what are the most common snacks in like the US and the UK?
Sarah: So they differ from every country. So in the UK, the most common snacks are more sweet-based snacks. So cakes, you know, confection, biscuits or cookies, and sweets. In the US, the main snack here are potato chips, but also again, cookies and candy.
Jonathan: So I understand you've been doing this big ZOE snacking study. Can you talk a bit about what you were measuring in that, beyond just whether people were snacking?
Sarah: Yeah, so snacking has actually not been looked at in, I think, as much detail as it should be considering it accounts for a quarter of our calories. And there's actually not many studies out there looking at the impacts of different types of snacks and snacking per se on our health. So we have this very unique cohort at ZOE from our ZOE Studies, and we've been able to track what snacks they're having, how many snacks they're having, how much energy comes from these snacks, but also the timing of the snacks. So we've been able to look at three really important features related to snacking: the quality, so how healthy those snacks are, the quantity, and the timing of those snacks, as well as the frequency. And we've been able to look at how do those different features related to snacking associate with various health outcomes. And the kind of health outcomes we've been looking at are health outcomes like blood pressure, body weight, your gut microbiome, your blood fat levels, your cholesterol levels, and so many other health-related factors.
Our new app gives you the power to see beyond the marketing
Make smarter, science-backed food choices in seconds. Scan. Score. Reveal the truth.
Jonathan: So I'd love to understand what you found and whether my grandmother is right and snacking is bad for you.
Sarah: So your grandmother is right, depending on what you are snacking on. And my mother brought me up also saying, "Sarah, you mustn't keep snacking, you'll ruin your appetite." I think the real important thing first to mention is that we found that, and this might be obvious, that it's the quality, the type of snacks that really matter, but it's not actually the frequency of snacking that seems to be important. What we found is that even if people were having multiple snacks throughout the day, as long as they were healthy snacks, they did not have a negative impact on people's body weight. They didn't have a negative impact on all of these other health measures. There are a few nuances, as always. The timing of when people were having those snacks was important, and so what we found was that people who were snacking after nine o'clock in the evening, and this actually accounted for about 30% of snackers. So a lot of us are snacking late at night. Those people snacking after nine o'clock in the evening did tend to have worse health outcomes. So they did tend to have higher fat around their belly. They did tend to have higher levels of inflammation, higher levels of cholesterol, and so forth. And what was interesting is that even if those people were snacking on healthy snacks, if they were snacking after nine o'clock in the evening, they still had these negative effects on health. So what this showed us in simple terms was that having multiple eating events, so multiple snacks throughout the day, if they're healthy, has no negative impact. And if you are stopping snacking by nine o'clock in the evening, then they can still be a beneficial part of your overall diet.
Jonathan: Sarah, I'm not a nutritional scientist, but when you talked about the typical snacks that people are eating, and you mentioned the UK and the US, but I assume it's the same sort of across the Western world everywhere, they didn't sound like very healthy snacks.
Sarah: No. So again, in our own ZOE studies, we found that about 75% of people's snack intake is from what we would consider unhealthy foods. So they're heavily processed, unhealthy foods. And I've actually done some research at King's College London where we investigated what the average snack profile was for people in the UK and also the US. So we leveraged these big food databases that we have, these national databases in the UK and the US, and we looked at what are the types of foods that people are getting their snacks from. And then we worked out the nutrient profile of this. And what we found was that on average people's snack intake compared to their main meals tends to be higher in salt, tends to be higher in saturated fat, tends to be higher in sugar, and tends to be lower in protein and lower in fiber. But more importantly, the types of foods that they're coming from tends to be very unhealthy. They tend to be these very heavily processed, easy-to-access, easy-to-carry-around kind of snacks.
Jonathan: So the food that we're eating for our snacks tend to be very different from the types of food that we're eating the rest of the time, or actually that's just the same as what these people are eating, you know, for their breakfast and lunch and dinner.
Sarah: So I love that question because this is something that we also looked at in our ZOE studies, and we looked at those people who have healthy main meals. Are their snacks also healthy? And what we found was that 40% of people that are having healthy main meals actually have really unhealthy snacks. So you are almost undoing some of that really good work that you are putting into your healthy meals. And I think this is a problem that we have is that lots of people spend a lot of time thinking about, "Okay, how can I make my lunch healthier? How can I make my dinner healthier?" And yet if 40% of those people are putting in all that effort for a really healthy lunch and dinner, then going and eating these really poor quality snacks, you're sort of undoing some of that benefit.
Jonathan: Honestly, I'm not sure I'm surprised by that because I think about, you know, my own experience, which is maybe you have a really good breakfast, that's easy, you have a good lunch, and then it's, you know, three o'clock or four o'clock in the afternoon and you go to, you know, some sort of coffee shop. And then there's just that huge array of pastries and all these sorts of things, and you know, when you're a bit tired at this point in the day and all the rest of it, it all looks delicious. And so you have one. Maybe my comparison is I worked in France quite a lot, and even when they work in France, they all feel you have to stop and go and have a proper lunch. And I was really struck by that, having always grown up in the US and the UK, that, you know, you would never do that, right? You'd just sort of eat something at your desk. But there they would have a proper lunch, and as part of that lunch, there would be a dessert. Whereas I feel I would generally not have a dessert as part of what I'm eating, you know, at my desk at lunchtime, but therefore I deserve my treat, you know, at three or four in the afternoon. And I probably have something enormous from Starbucks, right? Which is, you know, compared to that French experience, probably like five times bigger. Is that just me?
Sarah: No, I mean there's lots to unwrap there. So firstly, why do people snack? And there have been surveys that have looked at this, and the top two reasons are habit. This feeling that I need to be energized. And often the kind of snacks that we're having actually are the worst things to increase our energy. And then shortly after that, it's a treat. Then you've got the timing of the snacks, that yes, a lot of people tend to have their snacks mid-afternoon to kind of beat that post-lunch slump, which actually, if you're choosing the right type of lunch, you shouldn't actually be getting, or to kind of, you know, aimlessly, mindlessly out of habit, munch away. And I know you say that you are guilty of doing this often with chocolate in the evening at nine, 10 o'clock at night. And we know that eating later in the day, it's not great for us. And it's interesting you talked about your experience in France where they all stop for lunch and they have a big lunch and they have their sweet as part of their lunch. And this is one of the differences that we see in the Mediterranean countries compared to the UK and the US, that they tend to consume more of their calories early in the day. So actually the most calorie-dense meal in the Mediterranean countries is a lunch meal and the least calorie-dense is their dinner, and yet ours is the other way round. So you often hear Tim talk about, "Well, in Mediterranean countries, you know, they eat later in the evening." He's absolutely right, but they're eating less calories than we are eating for our evening meal. So that's just an aside point on the timing, but it really plays into snacks because the fact that the majority of snacks are consumed later in the day, some people might have a small, mid-morning snack, but the majority are consumed actually after three o'clock in the afternoon when we are less insulin sensitive, where also our hunger hormones are different. If you have a particular snack mid-morning versus later in the day, like in the afternoon or in the evening, evidence actually shows it will keep you less full. I.e., your feelings of fullness will be lower, having that snack later in the day compared to earlier in the day. So if you are gonna snack, I think our research and what else is out there shows very clearly that the quality of the snacks, the type of foods you're snacking on, is really important. The timing of the snacks, try not to snack after nine o'clock, is really important. More so than the frequency, how often you are snacking.
Jonathan: And if I understood right, you're saying there are a couple of things about timing. One is don't snack after dinner, after 9:00 PM, which you are right, I'm massively guilty of, but the other thing I think I heard you say, Sarah, is that actually if I was gonna have a snack, I'd be better off having that snack sort of between breakfast and lunch than I would be mid-afternoon. My body is going to be able to sort of metabolize it better, deal with it better, if it was before lunch?
Sarah: Yes, absolutely. Now we are talking quite a small difference in effect, but over a long period of time, you know, this builds up. That snack that you have mid-morning keeps you less full if it's late afternoon, for example, and you metabolize it a little bit differently. The other interesting point you made about your experience in France is that often, you know, the dessert is had as a dessert at the end of a main meal. So what you are being presented with is a large meal, but with lots of different kind of nutrients, you know, fat, protein, fiber. So even if you are having a sugary dessert after, you're not going to have that really big sugar peak from that cake, let's say, or that cookie that you would have if you eat that cookie on its own later in the day as a single eating event. As a single snack. Where I think it gets really interesting is there's some really interesting new data coming out about the consistency of the patterns of eating. And so what I would caution against is people who like me have a tendency to want to graze, to say, "Oh, well, I'm gonna be really good tomorrow and I'm only gonna have my lunch and dinner." And then the next day they have their bad day. Well, this new evidence shows that consistency in the pattern of eating is actually really important. So if you are a grazer, you are better, as long as it's on healthy snacks, to continue that typical pattern. Our body likes predictability, so our body likes to know when to expect food. But if you are swapping and changing from having two meals one day, five meals, you know, snacks the next day, back to two meals or three meals, that kind of throws our body off sync. And so what I would say is try and be consistent. So if you are someone that typically has three meals, try and stick with that. What we want to be doing is eating food that keeps us full. That gives us balanced blood sugar levels, for example, gives us balanced energy levels, balanced mood, balanced alertness. So this means selecting meals that have a decent amount of protein, fat, fiber in them. Because we know that they keep you full for longer, they keep you more alert, and also can maintain a more stable mood and energy level. And so what we want to do is avoid foods, whether it's just a snack or your breakfast, that give you big peaks in circulating blood sugar and then these big crashes that you get. And we've done some research in our ZOE studies on this where you see that if you have, for breakfast, for example, the kind of breakfast that I used to have and the kind of breakfast that you might used to have had where it might be low calorie, but it's very high in refined carbohydrates. Might be white bread, pastries, that sort of thing. And so what's happening is you get, about two hours after, this dip in circulating blood sugar, and we know from our own research that actually causes you to have less energy, be less alert, eat your next meal even sooner, but actually consume 320 calories more over the day because you are on this kind of roller coaster of events. So changing to a breakfast that has healthy fats, healthy proteins, and fiber in it means it's keeping you fuller for longer. You are gonna have a more stable blood sugar. You are going to be more alert, more energetic, and therefore you're not going to over-consume calories in a way that your body doesn't need them just because you're on this rollercoaster.
Jonathan: Could you give me some examples of what poor-quality snacks are?
Sarah: Probably nearly everything that's on your corner store shelf, nearly everything that's probably in Starbucks or in a coffee shop shelf. It's actually really easy to get poor quality snacks. It's really difficult to get healthy snacks. And so the kind of snacks that typically people are consuming. And again, like I said, you know, 75% of the snacks that we consume are from these poor quality snacks, very refined, very heavily processed snacks such as cereal bars. There's meat sticks that are out there in the UK, we call these Peperami, these heavily processed red meat sticks. And I know that these are being marketed a lot. For example, in the US, it's these high-protein snack sticks. They're so bad for you. They're packed full of saturated fat, packed full of salt. They're not good snacks for you. There are lots of potato chips or crisps, as we call them in the UK, that are bad for you. There's some coming out now that are fried in beef tallow. So with the whole movement in the US and the UK of demonizing seed oils, which is what we used to use when we made crisps, which actually can be healthy for us now, there's lots of companies producing crisps that are fried in beef tallow, which is basically a very saturated fat and is really bad for us.
Jonathan: That doesn't sound like a great picture. What are the key things that I need to be aware of that are gonna tell me that this snack is bad? So I've heard that processed meat is bad. So that's maybe one, but what else am I looking for? That is sort of like the red alert that this is not the snack that I should be eating.
Sarah: That's the million-dollar question. It's so difficult, Jonathan, to know whether that snack's bad. You know, I'm a nutrition scientist with 25 years' experience running clinical trials, looking at foods, looking at how processing changes the healthfulness of the food. When I go to a supermarket, even by looking on the back-of-pack labeling, yes, it will tell me a little bit. It will tell me if it's high in sugar, it will tell me if it's high in salt, tell me if it's high in saturated fat or low in fiber. But there's so much more to what makes a food, and in particular a snack, healthy. And given that the majority of the snacks that we consume come from processed foods, it's very, very difficult to work out. Is that food good for you? Is that snack healthy for you or is it unhealthy for you? I know that's not the answer you want because I know people want to be able to go into their corner store and actually say, "Okay, Sarah said look at this, and that's gonna tell me if it's healthy." So to give a kind of general rule of thumb, yes, you don't want one that's too high in sugar. Ideally, you want to have something that's got a decent amount of fiber in it. Ideally, you want to see, can you actually even recognize the food it came from? Does it have a really long list of ingredients? Now, just because it has a long list of ingredients doesn't automatically mean it's bad for you, but typically, therefore, it's more likely to have lots of additives, emulsifiers that we know are bad for our gut microbiome. So they're kind of some really simple things that you can look at. At ZOE, we've developed a food processing score. And we developed this processing score also with snacking in mind because we know it's so difficult to work out if those snacks have been processed in such a way that make them unhealthy for you. And we've looked at, okay, what are the features of processing that makes a food unhealthy for you? And processing impacts multiple features. Firstly, the nutrient composition of the food, so how much fiber, fat, protein, carbohydrate, but also those additives and emulsifiers. So firstly, our score considers those: how healthy are the nutrients that are in that processed food? How healthy or unhealthy are those additives or emulsifiers? Then we look at how palatable that food is, and this is a really big problem for snacks. So many snacks contain a magic mix of these nutrients, which when put together, make them very palatable, really, really tasty. So they kind of bypass our natural sort of brake system in our brain that says, "Hey, Jonathan, you've had enough. Don't eat anymore." And this is a mix of nutrients that you don't typically find in nature. And so it's a mix of like salt and fat or sugar and fat. So let's take crisps for example. They come from the humble potato. The potato, yes, is very high in starch. Put that potato in the form of crisps, you've suddenly got a magic, lovely taste of the oil. And then you've got the salt as well. It's like, you know the advert for Pringles: "Once you pop, you just can't stop." It's true. It's because it's got the salt, the fat, the carbohydrate. And so that's the other thing that we consider in our processing score. And it's really relevant to snacks because many snacks are designed to encourage us to hit that kind of bliss point in our brain and encourage us to overconsume them.
Jonathan: And Sarah, I've noticed that there are now a lot of alternatives to sort of potato-based chips and crisps. So like lentil chips and vegetable-based. Are these going to be much healthier?
Sarah: Sometimes they're healthier. So lentils, pulses, you know, kind of crisps made from these kind of beans and pulses, yes, they're likely to be higher in protein. Yes, they're likely to be higher in fiber, but often they've also got lots of unhealthy components added to them. Often they might have a lot of salt added to them, other additives, or a lot of sugar added to them. So I'd be a little bit cautious. And generally, I'd be cautious with any snack that carries a health halo saying "high protein, high fiber" because often yes, they might be high in that single nutrient, but what else is in that snack?
Jonathan: So it doesn't guarantee now that this is like a sort of safe and low-risk processed food.
Sarah: Absolutely not. And that's because the third reason that we know that processing can negatively impact our health that we also consider in our ZOE processing score is the structure of the food. Processing changes the structure of the food, and you'll find that many snacks do not have the original food structure. Now we call this the food matrix. We've done a whole podcast on this. For those that want to dive deeper into this, it's very difficult to measure that. You can't measure that on the back-of-pack labeling. So we use a surrogate measure in our score called energy intake rate, which is basically how fast do you consume that food? And the reason is because if you break down the structure of the food, you consume that food a lot faster; you'll consume that snack a lot more quickly. And so they're the three features that we look at in our processing score. And we know that many snacks tend to do very badly in these three features. They tend to be hyper-palatable. They tend to have a very high energy intake rate, i.e., be consumed very quickly, so you're consuming too many calories too quickly. And they also tend to have a poor nutrient profile.
Jonathan: You're making really clear that this highly processed food can be really risky. Is it only whether or not a food is a highly processed food that is gonna determine whether, you know, it's unhealthy when I'm, you know, out and about?
Sarah: Absolutely not. And it's really important to say that just because a food's been processed doesn't mean it's unhealthy. There are many processed foods that can be healthy for us, particularly whole grain processed foods. We are really deficient in fiber in most countries, particularly in the UK and the US. 95% of us don't get enough fiber. Whole grains are a really important source. Even if they are processed whole grains, the evidence still shows that they can be healthy for us.
Jonathan: So does that mean that if I have something that is high in sugar, I still need to worry about it even if it's not got all sorts of weird, you know, things on the ingredient list that I didn't know? I mean, is that still, you know, that's definitely I think how I was sort of brought up.
Sarah: If we're talking about pure sugar, table sugar, you should worry about it. It's gonna cause these big sugar peaks, these big sugar dips. It's associated with inflammation, hunger, excess calorie consumption. Not many of us just eat table sugar. If you are talking about whole foods that are high in sugar, dried foods, other foods, I absolutely would not worry about that. And actually, we are seeing a little bit of a concerning trend amongst some influencers out there and on social media actually demonizing food because of the sugar content. We know that if you are eating that fruit as a whole food, you tend to absorb that sugar more slowly into your circulation. And whole foods are packed with so many other amazing chemicals like polyphenols, which are these wonderful bioactive chemicals that act on anti-inflammatory pathways and antioxidant pathways and so forth. And so you've got to think of the food as a whole. So if you were to take a fruit or a piece of dried fruit and think, "Oh, it's got this amount of sugar, I can't eat it." No, that's not the right way to look at it. Think about how you're gonna digest that fruit, which will be slowly, how you're going to eat it, which will be slowly, but also think about what are all the other wonderful chemicals and nutrients that are in that fruit.
Jonathan: What about all these sort of pastries and cakes?
Sarah: So I think wherever you are getting that cake from, whether it's from a cake that you've made at home so you know the ingredients, or a cake that's been processed in such a way that it can sit on a supermarket shelf for months, either way, yes, it's going to be low in fiber, low in protein, high in unhealthy nutrients like sugar. Yes. The one that you are getting from your grocery store is gonna be worse for you probably because it's also got these other chemicals added to it. But just because something like that cake is not processed, i.e., is homemade, doesn't mean that it's automatically better for us. But Jonathan, you know, we all need to eat for pleasure. We need to get the joy in the food that we're having. If you want that afternoon cake and the rest of your diet is healthy, have it. Enjoy it. Just don't eat it all day long.
Jonathan: I love it. I'm still thinking through this idea that there's like nothing in the corner store that you can eat. What about all the cereal bars? There's been this explosion since I was a kid and a lot of them look really healthy, right? And they have normally tons of labels on them telling me that they're high in protein or whatever. Are they, you know, the rare example of the good snacks that you were talking about to me earlier?
Sarah: I would say beware of two things when it comes to cereal bars. Firstly, that not all cereal bars are created equally. The difference in the health effects of one cereal bar versus another is absolutely huge. The other thing I'd be aware of is health halos. So cereal bars are particularly susceptible to this, where you have a cereal bar that says "high protein, high fiber." Now, it could be full of absolute rubbish, but just because it meets that protein target or that fiber target, it can still say high protein, high fiber. And so this is what we consider like a health halo. Doesn't mean just because it has that claim that it is bad for you, but I would say be a little bit cautious. So when you are looking at your cereal bar, again, I would look at how much added sugar is in it. And often this isn't in the form of actually sugar. It might be treacles that are put on top, you know, syrups, those kind of things.
Jonathan: So when I turn it over on the back, will it just say sugar and that will make me realize that it's full of sugar, or is it sort of hidden away?
Sarah: So there's two different parts of the label you can look at. One is the ingredients. So let's say it's an oat-based bar. It will tell you the proportion of the ingredients that come from oats, the proportion that's from sugar. You don't want your sugar to be up there at 20, 30% of the bar. Then I would start to worry. As well as the ingredients, you also have the nutrient information. This is a legal requirement for everything that's sold to have both the nutrients and the ingredients. The nutrient information will tell you how much fat is in it, how much carbohydrate in it, how much of that carbohydrate is sugar, how much fiber is in it, and so forth. So if you do want to look at the label, and I do think it's really hard to interpret the labels in order to make a decision of whether that snack is healthy or not. I find it difficult because of the way foods have been processed. As a rule of thumb, you want something that is higher in fiber, something that's lower in sugar and lower in salt. A lot of these cereal bars, even though they're sweet, actually are packed with salt as well. And so I would be a little bit cautious about any of these bars that are high in sugar, low in fiber, and high in salt. When you are looking at the ingredients as well, again, look at the ingredients in terms of what proportion comes from nuts, what proportion comes from seeds, what proportion comes from oats, from these kind of whole food starting points, and then what's all these kind of added bits of syrups and powders that are put in.
Jonathan: I understand that we actually wrote an article talking about all the different ways that you as a food company might hide the fact that sugar with all of these different ingredient names, which ultimately really are sugar. Could you explain that to me, Sarah?
Sarah: Yeah, so sugar's a kind of slightly complicated one. So there's sugar that we think of in a typical way. We think about sugar, which is white sugar granules. At the end of the day, that is processed in our blood to what we call very simple sugars, in particular glucose. And we know that big elevations in glucose and particularly the dips may be detrimental to our health. And there's lots of other forms of sugars that are then processed into these simple sugars. So you've got syrups, like nectar syrup, you've got honeys. Or often if it ends in -ose, O-S-E, then that's an indication that it's a sugar because we know sugar, for example, is called sucrose. Fructose is another kind of sugar. So most sugars end in -ose. Glucose, fructose, sucrose.
Jonathan: And so that means that I could have in my ingredient list, as I understand it, sugar actually appearing like multiple times, but with different names.
Sarah: Absolutely. So you can have multiple sources of different types of sugars in the ingredient list. On the nutrient profile on the back of pack of your labeling, it will list it just as sugar. It will come under carbohydrate and then under sugar. But in your ingredient list, yes, you could have five or six different types of sugar sources.
Jonathan: If I really wanna know how much sugar is in this, I really need to look at that ingredient list where it says sort of carbohydrates of which sugars, you know, 25% or something. But whereas when I look in the ingredients, it can be really hidden to me because it's sort of broken up into all these different things that make it impossible for me to tell that actually it's like half sugar.
Sarah: Absolutely. And having some sugar in there is absolutely fine. You know, our bodies are so clever. We've evolved to be able to process fat, protein, fiber, and carbohydrate, of which sugar is one of them. So don't be too worried if there's sugar. I think the point here is that lots of snacks tend to be high in sugar, and it tends to not be obvious unless you're looking at the back-of-pack labeling.
Jonathan: Brilliant. And we'll put the link in the show notes to that article because when I read it, I was amazed. I think there were like 42 different names for sugar that food manufacturers can use, which is quite extraordinary. Well, I think you've come prepared with seven top snacks for supporting health. Is that right?
Sarah: I have.
Jonathan: So having told me about all these things I should avoid, I'd like to understand what I could snack on instead. So why don't you start with the first one?
Sarah: So there's lots that you can snack on. I want to give you a really simple, old-fashioned, accessible, and cheap snack. An apple. The humble apple. That saying that I was brought up with, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," I should have paid more attention to. And the reason is, firstly, it's so easy just to have one in your bag. They're long-lasting, they're healthy for you because, assuming you keep the skin on, they're full of fiber, they're full of other healthy nutrients, nutrients that we would consider antioxidant nutrients like vitamin C, for example. They're also packed full of polyphenols. So when we think about polyphenols, which are these colored pigments that are found in fruits that we know have these bioactive properties that we know are very beneficial for our gut microbiome, but also wider for health because of their anti-inflammatory effects, we typically think of berries when we think of polyphenols. But actually, apples have an enormous amount of polyphenols as well. And when you eat a whole apple, despite the fact that yes, it's got lots of sugar in it, you eat it in such a way because of the texture of the apple, because it's typically very crunchy, that you eat it quite slowly as well. So you also get a really balanced blood sugar response, and there's been studies looking at this that show also that you don't get that dip despite the sugar load that you would if you were to have apple juice, for example. So I think Apple is a great one and it ticks all the boxes for me. And you know, something I'm really passionate about is making sure what we recommend is affordable for everyone and accessible. It's one of the cheapest fruits that's out there.
Jonathan: It's really interesting you say that eating it as the whole apple is the key. Yeah. I can't have it as like apple juice or a smoothie. You have to actually eat the apple.
Sarah: So ideally you would eat the apple. There has been research comparing the health effects of the whole apple versus apple smoothie versus apple juice. So if you consume a whole apple versus apple smoothie that are nutritionally identical, so same fiber, same everything, what you see is the speed at which you eat them is really, really different. So you'll eat the apple puree about four times more quickly than you will the whole apple. What does that mean? It means that you get these bigger peaks, but more importantly, these big dips in circulating blood glucose, blood sugar, that cause you to be more hungry later on. And we know that eating a whole apple versus apple puree or smoothie apple actually keeps you a lot fuller for a longer time. Strip out all the fiber, then you've got apple juice. Well, that's like having kind of pure sugar that might have a few of the other benefits like some vitamin C in, but absolutely go for the whole apple.
Jonathan: So I had an apple yesterday, so today I would like something else.
Sarah: So number two is chickpeas. Now it might be slightly more difficult to get on the go. But there's lots of different ways you can eat chickpeas. And the reason I recommend this is because we are not eating as a nation, and it's the same in the US and many countries, enough legumes, enough pulses, enough beans, which is basically what chickpeas are.
Jonathan: And I think they are known as garbanzo beans for our US listeners.
Sarah: Okay, garbanzo beans. Thank you. I've learned something new today. And they're so healthy for us. They're high in protein. They're really high in fiber. You know, they are such an important source of slow carbohydrates as well. And, you know, there's good evidence to show the more we can incorporate these kind of beans and legumes into our diet, the healthier we are. You can have them lots of different ways. You can actually just have them straight out of the jar. Lots of people might not like that. I know many people that do munch on them out of a jar. The other thing you could do is you could try roasting them, so you could roast them with your favorite herbs or spices. A great way to make it even healthier because we know adding herbs and spices to your diet is really important in improving health. And again, we've got an entire podcast on this. You know, so some people like, you know, paprika sprinkled on them or turmeric or something, and if you roast them, they last longer. You can put them in a jar. So it's something that, yes, you do need to pre-prepare them. So there is that downside. But if you make a big batch, then they should last for a reasonable amount of time and you can put them in a jar, carry them around with you.
Jonathan: And I've seen people starting to sell roasted chickpeas. Would that still be good?
Sarah: It depends. So there are some on the market that are in quite a pure form that have very little in terms of unhealthy additives or chemicals added to them. They might have some nice added herbs and spices or a very small amount of salt, in which case, yes, you're still getting all the benefits. But I have seen some there that actually have a lot of the structure of the chickpea broken down because they might be converted into some sort of chickpea style crisp or chip, and they often have lots of added chemicals as well. So for the shop-bought ones, I would look at the back-of-pack labeling.
Jonathan: What's number three?
Sarah: Number three is nuts. I'm a huge fan of nuts, and again, I know we've done a podcast talking all about the health benefits of nuts. Nuts are fantastic. It's like a powerhouse of nutrition. Nuts are packed with fiber, protein, heart-healthy oils, and loads and loads of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals, and polyphenols. They're so good for us. They're really easy to carry around as well. And because of the balance of the nutrients, the fact that they're high in protein, the fact that they're high in fiber, and the fact that they're high in healthy fats, they also keep you fuller for longer. So they're not giving you that kind of quick sugar fix and dip. So you will stay fuller for longer. And I've actually done a study looking at giving people nuts as their snacks versus people having typical US/UK snacks. I asked people to either consume 20% of their energy from typical UK/US snacks that we designed and actually provided for them, or 20% of their energy from almond nuts. We said, "Keep everything else in your diet the same. Don't change anything else. This is all you've got to do. Just change your snacks." We monitored them over six weeks. At the end of the six weeks, those people who were consuming almond nuts instead of the typical UK/US snacks had improvements in blood cholesterol and blood vessel function in so many different health parameters that actually equated to a 30% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk. Just from changing their typical snacks to nuts.
Our new app gives you the power to see beyond the marketing
Make smarter, science-backed food choices in seconds. Scan. Score. Reveal the truth.
Jonathan: So firstly, that seems like a mad level of improvement just to make one swap. Aren't nuts really high in fat? So if you do that, won't you end up putting on weight?
Sarah: No. Despite nuts being very high in fat, people who are nut consumers do not have greater weight compared to people who are non-nut consumers. Randomized controlled trials, so clinical trials, also show if you increase people's nut intake, they do not increase their weight. The reason is because of the structure of the nuts, and I've done lots of trials on this. So the structure of the nuts, this food matrix that I talked about earlier, is very protective in terms of when you consume a whole nut, what happens is that actually about 30% of the calories are excreted. And so you are actually not absorbing all of the calories from that nut. And that's because nuts, like all plant foods, have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cells. The cells are surrounded by a cell wall, which is what fiber is. This cell wall, particularly in nuts, is very rigid, is very difficult to be broken down. So the point at which you swallow a nut, the particles pass through your gastrointestinal tract, and some of the fat is released from these cells, but actually a lot remains intact. It remains intact, it reaches your gut. So 30% of the calories are excreted, but more importantly, you are providing a feast for your gut microbiome as well.
Jonathan: Is the microbiome part of this story important in your view?
Sarah: We think so. We've again done studies looking at the microbiome following nut consumption, and also at ZOE. With our ZOE studies, we see a really strong signal in those that are consuming nuts. We see an increase in many of the beneficial bacteria that we particularly focus on at ZOE.
Jonathan: So good food for us and good food for our bugs.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Jonathan: All right. What's number four, Sarah?
Sarah: Number four is yogurt. This is a slightly unusual one because I don't think people would typically think of yogurt as a snack. It depends on the type of yogurt, but if you're consuming the right type of yogurt, and by right type, I mean a yogurt that is in its purest form. So I mean like Greek yogurt that doesn't have added sugar, sweeteners, fruit flavorings added to it, or another kind of natural yogurt. That's so healthy for you. It's high in protein. It's full of gut-loving bacteria as well because it's fermented dairy. So we know that that's also good for our gut microbiome. What I would say is be very cautious of the kind of yogurts that have the added sweeteners, have a lot of sugar added to them, or have these fruit flavorings because they tend to be a lot less healthy for us.
Jonathan: And what about low-fat versions of your yogurt? So what do I need to have there for this to be healthy?
Sarah: If you are going for low-fat, you need to go for low-fat again of the pure form, so low-fat Greek yogurt, low-fat natural yogurt. What I'd be really cautious about is a lot of the yogurts that are branded as low-fat, in order to make up for the fat, so that you don't have that lovely creamy texture that the fat brings to the yogurt, they often have lots of things added in that we know might impact our gut microbiome in a negative way, or they might be a lot higher in sugar. One of the reasons that many yogurts are marketed as low-fat and have had the fat removed is because firstly, this fear about calories and fat being high in calories, and this is something that we talk about often, that we need to move away from thinking about the quantity of calories and think about the quality of calories. The other reason is because dairy fat is typically high in saturated fat. Saturated fat generally we know is really bad for us, particularly bad for our heart health, but what we now know is that fermented dairy, so this is yogurt and this is cheese, something changes in that kind of structure of that food that seems to actually negate, so prevent the saturated fat that's in that yogurt or that cheese from actually having a negative impact on our health. And so that's why I would say that yogurt is a great one, whether it's full-fat or low-fat, as long as it's not got any of these additives, these sugars, and these kind of imitation fruits added to them, I think it's a great option. But I think high-fat is just as healthy as well.
Jonathan: Brilliant. What is number five?
Sarah: So number five is popcorn. This might surprise lots of people.
Jonathan: You're surprising me. Popcorn. Absolutely. I think about that as like I'm at the movies and I eat this enormous tub. That's my healthy snack, is it?
Sarah: It can be. Just like yogurt, it depends on what type of popcorn you're having. So let's assume it's a popcorn that you are making at home, or even in one of those bags that you can buy that you put in your microwave oven. Those tend to be quite low in salt, or if you're making them at home, you have the option of what you want to add into them. Pure popcorn is a great snack because it's actually really quite high in fiber. Surprisingly high in fiber. So if you are making it at home as well, it's a great snack that can be made very, very quickly. It only takes three, four minutes. It can last for a reasonable amount of time provided it's sealed. I mean, it can go a bit soggy, but you also have control over what you add to it, and you can actually make it an even healthier snack. So just like we talked about with the chickpeas, you can add herbs or spices to it. There's some wonderful recipes out there for popcorn with different spices and cinnamon if you want a sweet one, or you can do savory. So you are really kind of boosting the fact that you're having a high-fiber snack with having the benefits of all of these spices. Where I'd be cautious again are the ones that are often pre-made that you get in the supermarkets or what you get also when you go to the cinema, like the toffee ones. Absolutely not. That is not a healthy snack. Packed with sugar and goodness knows what else. Some of the salt and sweet ones again that you see in the supermarket, they do have quite a lot of salt and quite a lot of sugar. It's up to individuals to look at the back of pack, have a look. You know, you should be aiming for less than about 1.5 grams of salt per 100 grams of popcorn. There are some brands out there that have salt at that low level. If possible, I would try and make it at home.
Jonathan: What's number six?
Sarah: So number six is slightly left-field because I don't think we would typically think of this as a snack. And this is avocado. And the reason I've chosen avocado is because I think it is an incredible fruit to consume. It's so high in fiber, it's so high in heart-healthy oils, and you can actually carry it around if you do have it in, you know, a plastic container or something. It will keep you full for long as well, because of the fiber, because of the heart-healthy fats in it. And again, you can spice it up a bit. You can add some extra virgin olive oil that's gonna make it even healthier. I like it with a little pinch of salt. Not too much salt, but a little pinch of salt and some extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar. Or you can put your herbs and spices on it so you can change it each day, you know, to be a really versatile snack.
Jonathan: This is one that you've really sold me on. I never would've thought about doing this before ZOE, but now if I'm at home and I'm suddenly hungry, I have got in my mind that like, "Oh, I could open an avocado. I can smother it in extra virgin olive oil, put like some salt and pepper and spice on top of it." I mean, that's like 60 seconds I've described, and it's delicious and feels incredibly indulgent, I guess, because of all the fats that are there in it.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely. You know, fat is what carries the flavor of food. Fat is what gives the creaminess and that lovely mouthfeel of food. And so something like an avocado, I think, is a perfect example of where you can have your cake and eat it. Because you've got that beautiful flavor, you've got that beautiful texture, but you're getting all the fiber and healthy fats as well. I also think avocado's a great example of how we can think outside the box, that we always think of snacks in, you know, these prepackaged things or a bit of fruit, for example. Actually think about all other ways that you can get snacks in your diet. Have you got leftovers from the night before from your meal? A snack is just an eating event between a main meal. So think about things that you wouldn't typically think about. Boiled egg, for example. These are all great examples of thinking outside of that traditional snack kind of criteria.
Jonathan: All right, we are on to the last one in the list. What have you got for us, Sarah?
Sarah: So number seven, Jonathan, you are going to love. It's chocolate.
Jonathan: Ooh, I do love chocolate.
Sarah: Again, it depends on the type of chocolate. Dark chocolate. So chocolate that's got at least 70% cocoa solids we know can be really good for our health. We know that it's packed full of these magic chemicals called polyphenols. And again, we've done a whole episode on this at ZOE, and these have really beneficial effects on how our blood vessels function. It varies from one person to the other. Some get greater benefits than other people, so it can affect everything from our heart health to our brain health. Now, I wouldn't say therefore you should go and consume endless amounts of chocolate. But if you are buying this dark chocolate, you'll find that actually you tend to feel quite full and more satisfied from a dark chocolate than you would from a milk chocolate like Hershey's or Dairy Milk. And that's because in Hershey's and Dairy Milk or these other milk chocolates, they tend to also have a lot of sugar added to them, and so it's a lot more easy to overconsume those, and they don't have the added benefits of having the right amount of these chocolate solids that give all of these heart health and brain health benefits.
Jonathan: Bringing us back, I guess, to the start of the show, you are saying that although it could be a healthy snack as part of my diet, if I am eating this at sort of nine or 10 or 11 o'clock at night in front of the sofa after dinner, it's still not a good thing to do.
Sarah: Even though it's a healthy snack, I would still avoid snacking on any of these healthy snacks late into the evening. Now, nine isn't a hard cutoff, but it's a cutoff that our data shows after which it seems to be having a negative impact because you are eating out of tune with your natural body clock. Try not to snack after eight or nine in the evening.
Jonathan: Thank you, Sarah, for bringing like these seven sort of magical snacks to replace what I've done before. I'd like to finish by just understanding what might happen if, you know, one of our listeners has been eating the way that you said three-quarters of people, you know, even in the ZOE database are doing, which is their snacks are much lower quality than the rest of their meal, and they switch, they swap it out for like your seven. What health benefits will they get and how quickly will they get them?
Sarah: So I think if you are a snacker who's typically getting 20 to 25% of your energy from snacks and you are snacking on typical UK/US snacks, which are not very healthy, and you swap to any of these seven. It's not limited to these seven, so any kind of healthy whole foods, you will see quite immediate benefits. You might see an immediate benefit that day from not having a high-sugar snack that's causing a sugar crash, for example, that causes you to feel very hungry, have a low mood, have low energy. You should start to generally feel better after a couple of weeks. And this is something that we've looked at a lot at ZOE, is how quickly do people start to say, "Oh, I feel generally more energetic, generally have better mood." You should start to see an improvement in other health outcomes in two to four weeks. And so again, our own research that I've done at King's shows this, that you should start to see improvement in your blood lipids. So your cholesterol levels, you should start to see improvements maybe in blood pressure after four to six weeks, in your glucose control, and so forth. So you in the moment feel better either that day or certainly within a few weeks. And then within weeks to months, you will start to see a benefit in some of the clinical measures as well. Now it depends on your starting point. It depends on how much energy you are getting from snacks. It depends on when you are eating those snacks, and it depends on how healthy those snacks that you are going on to eat are. I think it's really important at this stage, Jonathan, to say I am not in this episode encouraging non-snackers to go and start snacking at all. What I'm saying is, if you are a snacker, and as long as you're not snacking late at night and you are snacking on healthy foods, then that's okay as part of a balanced diet. And that actually empowering those people who are snackers to say, "Do you know what? Just changing your snacks is one of the most simple single dietary strategies that you can do tomorrow to improve your health."
Jonathan: Thank you so much, Sarah. I'd like to just try and summarize. So my biggest takeaway is you don't have to give up snacks if you want to be healthy. There is such a thing as like a healthy snack, and even if you are someone who's having multiple snacks in the day, that isn't necessarily like bad for your health and something that you need to stop doing, despite what my wonderful grandmother said to me. And if I'm eating those healthy snacks, actually that doesn't mean that, you know, I'm gonna put on weight versus if I'd given up the snacking. So I think that's really surprising for many of us. However, three-quarters of all the snacks that people are eating are unhealthy, and that for the vast majority of people, the quality of their snacks is much lower than the quality of their main meal. So, although in theory you can eat healthy snacks, most people, like, their diet is sort of getting pulled down by their snacks. And you said it's like higher in salt, higher in saturated fat, much more likely to be this sort of high-risk processed food, higher in sugar, lower in protein, lower in fiber. So it's sort of like all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff. So you do have to be really thoughtful about what you're eating as a snack. Yes. And it's very hard to find good snacks if you're just out and about, which is also a challenge. So it sort of requires some, you know, preparation. One thing that came through really strongly in your research, which is really new, is the timing of snacking looks like it's really important. And 30% of snackers are eating after 9:00 PM in your research, and that had a bad impact on like their belly fat, on their health. So even if what you're eating is a healthy snack, that timing does still matter. Watch out for like what the snacks claim, because if the snack is claiming for you it's really healthy, it's probably what you described as a health halo, and it's probably not real. So if you've got the cereal bar and it says like "high protein," then you know, you actually think that's almost a watch-out for the ingredients, and it's probably high-risk processed food. Interestingly, I think almost none of the seven snacks that you described, you know, it comes with a health halo. Funnily enough, my apple just tends to just like have nothing on it or like a little sticker that you never know what it means. So they need to get better marketing.
Sarah: Yeah, but I would like to caveat, it doesn't mean all of those packaged snacks are bad that carry a health halo.
Jonathan: As I'm thinking about when to eat, I think the other thing that I was struck by is you said, if I'm gonna have these snacks again, the evidence suggests that like a mid-morning snack is likely to be better than a mid-afternoon snack. I'm more likely to be able to cope with it. And that's particularly true maybe if it's a bit of an indulgence. So if I'm gonna have my cake or my pastry, I'd actually be better off doing that, you know, between breakfast and lunch than I would do in the middle of the afternoon.
Sarah: Yes. Although the difference is quite small, so if you really like it in the afternoon, don't worry. Just have it in the afternoon.
Jonathan: I love it. Sarah, you're always the person I think of when I crack open the cake. And then you shared like these seven snacks. And just to summarize, started with the apple, which you said, you know, deserves its name for keeping the doctor away. The second, which was really a surprise, is chickpeas or garbanzo beans as they're known in the US. And this idea, you could just take them straight from the jar, but actually like you can roast them, you know, with a bunch of spices and take it with you. And actually that, you know, you can do that. It's a bit like sort of your batch preparation. Third one, nuts. Despite all these fears we've had about how it's gonna make you fat, actually, they're like this magic rocket fuel.
Sarah: Yep.
Jonathan: For your microbiome. The next is yogurt, where you have to be really careful about like getting like a real yogurt rather than something which has been super processed and hidden. But if you can get like a real yogurt, particularly like a Greek style yogurt because of the higher protein you were describing, that actually could be a great snack.
Sarah: And Jonathan, by real Greek style or natural yogurt, I do mean the quite standard ones that you get in your grocery store, supermarket. I don't mean you've got to go to a farm where it's just all been churned.
Jonathan: One of the funny things is often these are the cheapest yogurts I find.
Sarah: Yep. Because it's unadulterated. It's just simple yogurt. It's just come from milk that's been left out, in simple terms, and it's yogurt that's come out of it. It's not had to go through all of these other processes and have all of these fancy ingredients added to them.
Jonathan: That's brilliant. The next is popcorn, also a huge surprise because I would've thought about that as being bad for you, but it needs to be without added sugar. It could have added salt, but you need to take a look at that and make sure that level is not too high. And then if you're making it at home, then you can add like herbs and spices and all this sort of fun stuff. But you know, again, this feels like it's a treat, but actually you're saying it's healthy. The next is avocado, which I know has a special place in your heart, Sarah, with all of those healthy fats. And I love this idea that potentially you could actually take that with you. You know, if you've already cut it open, then that's something that, you know, you could take with you into work. You described it as just being this amazing powerhouse. And then last of all, I think most surprising for many people will be chocolate. Chocolate can be a healthy snack, but it needs to be dark chocolate. You said more than 70% actually coming from cocoa solids and not from sugar. And then because of all of these amazing polyphenols and other things that you talk about, actually something so delicious could actually be good for you.
Sarah: Absolutely. But don't overconsume the chocolate.
Jonathan: I love it. And I think, you know, the thing that I'm always left with when I talk with you, Sarah, is that ultimately food is meant to be enjoyed. Don't feel that you can never have like a cake or any of these sorts of things. Think about this within the construct of your entire diet. And I love this idea that, therefore, if you are eating a really healthy diet, then absolutely it gives you this opportunity to, you know, have some cake, have whatever these other things are, and you're saying I'm gonna be okay.
Sarah: Absolutely.
