There is a perception that snacking is an unhealthy habit. How often did your parents tell you not to snack because you wouldn’t eat your meal. If you go to the snack section of any grocery store, gas station or cafeteria, you will be spoiled for choice; candy, chocolate, potato chips, pretzels and hiding in the corner granola bars….. often covered in chocolate, packed with sugar or doused in chocolate chips.
Perhaps this is why snacking has rightly gained a pretty bad reputation. However, sometimes you really do need to eat something to keep you going between meals. If you eat healthily, you eat three meals a day with about five or more hours between them. You will of course get peckish and as has been proven by multiple scientific studies, when you’re hungry and your sugar level is low, you won’t function well.
The healthy solution traditionally was to grab an apple or a banana between meals to fill the gap or apparently if you are British, a cup of tea with milk and plain biscuit. The issue with an apple or a banana is that you can’t store them in your handbag or office drawer days in advance. A biscuit gives you a quick sugar fix but is not great for you.
If you look in children’s lunchboxes or go round offices now and see what people are eating instead of traditional snacks, you will see that people are starting to eat more seed, grain and fruit based products. For convenience they can buy them prepackaged in a number of different formats. They can be bought in their raw state; a bag of dried fruits or nuts, a granola bar and more recently a bag of granola. These are all items that can be eaten at a desk and in the case of a granola bar, even on the run.
The reason for the change is because people have become more concerned as to what they fuel their body with. They do not want to stuff themselves with excess sugar or fake preservatives or colors. They also believe in the claims made about the benefits that these products can have to our wellbeing. The goodness they contain and the slow released energy. They no longer need the banana or apple that has become bruised in their bag or the deliciously sweet chocolate bar or salty crisps that cause guilt feelings later and a loosening of the belt.
As the healthy snacks sections grow, companies need to source a manufacturer that can produce a granola to their exact standards and requirements, they know that in this segment of the market the consumer is very exacting. They look for a company like EffectivEat who can manufacture granola snacks in multiple formats and formulations. They can make them gluten, GMO, cholesterol, dairy and trans-fat free and even free of preservatives if that is what the customer requires.
The snacking culture is changing and grocery stores, cafeterias, restaurants, vending machines and airlines are desperately trying to keep up with the granola revolution.