Midmorning Snacks May Thwart Diets

Dieters may want to reconsider that mid-morning snack.

In a 12-month study of 123 overweight or obese women, those who snacked between breakfast and lunch lost less weight than those who skipped a mid-morning nosh. The mid-morning snackers lost about 7 percent of their total body weight, but those who didn't snack mid-morning lost 11.5 percent, according to the report.

The finding may not relate to time of day as much as the short interval between breakfast and lunch for these snackers, explained study author Dr. Anne McTiernan, director of the Prevention Center at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's Public Health Sciences Division.

The women may have been eating out of boredom, or for reasons other than hunger, she said. The net result is too many calories in a day.

"Snacking, per se, isn't bad, it's more what you eat and when you are snacking," she said. "If you start snacking in the morning, you might be eating more throughout the day and taking more food in."

Smart snacking can be part of a sound weight-loss plan, McTiernan noted. The timing of snacks, frequency of eating them and quality of snacks all have to be considered, she added.

The study is published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. The U.S. National Cancer Institute and U.S. National Institutes of Health funded the research. 

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