Understanding Eating Events: Snacks and Meal Patterns in Great Britain

Abstract

Sociological analysis of eating has for a long time tracked the fate of a popularly endorsed, idealized form of the “family” or “proper” meal. “Snacking” has often been constructed as its symbolic opposite, as irregular, anomic and unhealthy. This paper, based on data from a survey of eating patterns conducted in Great Britain in 2012 (n = 2,784), analyzes eating occasions which respondents stated were snacks rather than meals, focusing on their frequency, scheduling, contents, duration and social context. It finds that “snacks” are taken across all socio-demographic groups and take place in accordance with a common and predictable schedule. Snacks are smaller and less structured than most meals but mostly do not comprise what is generically described as “snack foods.” Snacks are shorter in duration, and less sociable than other eating events, reflecting their size, simplicity and informality. However, most are eaten in company, are planned for, and are wholesome. Common negative evaluations of eating between and outside meals have failed to appreciate the range and character of adjunct eating events, and the degree to which they form part of aggregate patterns and individual routines.

Keywords:

• eating
• food
• meals
• snacks
• sociology
• Great Britain

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Laura Fenton, Sebastian Juhnke and Susan Oman for their help in coding, and Dunnhumby for their assistance in data collection and preparation. They would also like to thank Anne Lhuissier and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Notes

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2. However, it seems that the majority of the time was spent drinking rather than eating.

3. Other ways to define snacks include: whatever is eaten between what the researcher designates as “meal times”; or occasions when a certain type of “snack food” is eaten; or a requirement that a certain minimum or nutritional profile be present (see Johnson and Anderson 2010).. These approaches attempt to impose an objective schema for identifying snacks, whereas our approach, like that of most contemporary diary studies, places the initiative on classification with respondents. While this method is probably the most sensitive definition for understanding the meanings of food events, this shaped our findings in a way that more “objective” definitions seek to avoid. In compensation it was possible to evaluate the degree to which snacks and meal descriptions resembled one another (see section 4.3).

4. Lower frequency of snacking at weekends may be due to the manner in which the data were collected. By design, the weekend day recorded was further away in the memory than the weekday and accurate recall of detail atrophies with time.

5. Bivariate analysis comparing under-40s with over-40s shows little difference in propensity to report one or more snacks, or in numbers of eating events in total. Older respondents are more likely to report three meals per day. Comparing households shows little difference in numbers of snacks taken or eating events overall. One-person households are disproportionately likely to eat fewer than three meals a day. Single-parent families report fewer meals and fewer snacks than all other household types.

6. On both days, peaks in numbers reporting eating appear more distinctive than those shown in UK data based on time-use diaries (Southerton et al. 2011). We think this is due to our using hourly intervals in our study, a more socially homogeneous sample than the time-use studies enjoy (although controlling for class and age makes little difference to these patterns of scheduling), and an absence in the time-use data of eating while doing other things.

7. This appears largely a feature of working patterns, with full-time workers most likely to eat snacks on weekdays in the morning, although they are the least likely group to snack at this time at weekends. One possibility considered was that more hurried weekday schedules might involve skipping breakfasts, but only 7 percent of the sample do not eat any meals in the morning on weekdays, and 10 percent on weekends. There was little evidence of compensation for not eating a morning meal through snacking.

8. Scheduling of meals and snacks appeared unaffected by age. Households with children eat their morning and midday meals in greater numbers at 7–8 a.m. and 12–1 p.m. on weekdays, whereas those without children tend to favor 8–9 a.m. and 1–2 p.m.

9. In our coding, dish descriptions, which were non-technical categories such as might appear on menus and in recipes, were inductively allocated major or minor status. Dishes which had few components and required little preparation such as soups, sandwiches, small salads, and cereal were considered minor, more elaborate dishes such as roasts, pizzas, steaks, stews, and fish and chips were considered major.

10. Our data indicated the sources of meals and snacks, whether purchased or acquired from shops, restaurants, takeaways or other vendors before consumption, or if they were sourced from the household food stocks.

11. Foods previously designated snack foods may also become considered meals and vice versa. Respondents in Traphagan and Brown’s (2002) study of commensality in Japanese fast food report that Okanomiyaki, a kind of pancake with vegetables, was previously considered snack food but is now eaten commonly as a full meal. Sandwiches in Britain may be another such example.