Research Report Ambiguity of ‘snack’ in British usage Aı ¨nhoa Chamontin, Gabriele Pretzer, David A. Booth * Food Quality and Nutritional Psychology Research Group, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK Received 6 December 2002; accepted 18 March 2003 Abstract Research into least fattening eating patterns indicates that in England ‘a snack’ is a term that refers to different eating habits from ‘snacking’ and that neither pattern of behaviour necessarily involves ‘snack food’. These hypotheses were tested by randomised mailings to a convenience sample of university campus addressees with the subject heading of the message and the topic of questions in it being one of the terms, a snack, snacking or snack food. Responses to all three terms much more often referred to eating between mealtimes than eating at mealtimes but this contrast was less for a snack, especially at lunchtime. Previous and subsequent eating occasions therefore tended to be at mealtimes, but again less so for a snack. A snack also differed from snacking or eating snack food in eliciting more reports by women of eating in the home than out, and more eating alone than in company. However, reports by men contributed most to differences between snack terms in the foods reported: more men ate bread in a snack than when snacking but more ate sweet items when snacking than in a snack. More men reported savoury items (e.g. potato crisps) as snack food than in response to the other two terms; however, when savouries were combined with bread-containing items, the women were unlike the men in that more of them referred to such items when snacking. Thus, for these people in England, having a snack is not the same thing as snacking or eating snack food. Because of these ambiguities in use of the root word snack, it may be best to avoid all its derivatives in questions to research participants, discussion among investigators and educational messages. q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Snacking; Having a snack; Eating snackfood; Light meals; Bread; Potato crisps Introduction The mechanisms by which eating satiates appetite for food in human beings were sufficiently elucidated in principle by the mid-1970s for it to have become feasible to calculate the temporal pattern of consumption from a familiar diet in the absence of environmental influences (Booth, Toates, & Platt, 1976). A simulated 70 kg individual (in bed from 11:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.) ate only at around 8 a.m., 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., in meals of about 4 MJ. From the similarity to the concepts of mealtimes common among sedentary workers in temperate climates, it was suggested that the social conventions in such societies are adapted to average physiological needs (Booth & Mather, 1978). The success of this quantitative modelling depended on the fact that the physiological after-effects of eating on hunger are dominated by the decelerating rate at which the stomach passes ordinary food down the digestive tract to the rest of the body (Booth, 1978; Booth & Mather, 1978). The rapid onset of considerable distension in the stomach, the initial rush of nutrients to stimulate receptors in the wall of the small intestine, and metabolism of the very first substrates absorbed, can all contribute to the loss of attractiveness of available foods that constitutes the spontaneous ending of a meal. If the meal is too brief for the postgastric effects to terminate eating, then direct control of the amount eaten can be vested in a learnt conjunction of moderate distension with cues from the foods in the meal that are predictive of aversively reinforcing nutritional after- effects (Booth & Davis, 1973; Booth, Gibson, Toase, & Freeman, 1994; Booth & Grinker, 1993; Booth, Lee, & McAleavey, 1976; Booth, Mather, & Fuller, 1982; cp. Cecil, Francis, & Read, 1998; Gibson & Booth, 2000). Then later, after most of the meal has left the stomach, the rate of gastric emptying decreases and so intestinal stimulation declines and the support of metabolism from absorption also becomes attenuated. Thus all the internal signals again act in concert, but this time to cue a rise in hunger, i.e. an 0195-6663/03/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0195-6663(03)00036-9 Appetite 41 (2003) 21–29 www.elsevier.com/locate/appet * Corresponding author. E-mail address: d.a.booth@bham.ac.uk (D.A. Booth).