Everyday Systems

This study investigates the dynamic shifts in snacking behaviors and patterns in China. Using four waves (1991, 2004, 2006, and 2009) from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), with full socioeconomic and demo- graphic data and 3-day, 24-hour dietary recall data, 45,402 individuals age two and older were studied.

This study shows that the Chinese population is experiencing a dramatic increase in snacking and that a marked transition from a tradition of two or three main meals per day toward meals combined with snacks is underway. Further research should attempt to understand how the marketing of food and other changes in the food system have led to such dramatic changes in eating behavior. The health implications of such a transition in snacking behavior should be further investigated.

In China snacking played a small role in the diets of individuals of all ages until 2004. Since 2004, a marked transition in snacking behaviors and patterns has occurred with significant increases in the prevalence of snacking, the number of snacking occurrences in a day, and the contribution of snacks to total EI. This represents more than a doubling of snacking from 2004 to 2009.

Tracie McMillan wrote:More than two centuries after Jefferson wrote of the inexcusable divide between the meals of the poor and the rich, we've yet to solve what food historian Harvey Levenstein has aptyly dubbed the "paradox of plenty." Put simply, our agriculture is abundant but healthy diets are not. The American way of eating is defined not by plenty, but by the simultaneous, contradictory, relentless presence of scarce nutrition in its midst. And those this conundrum may be seen most clearly in America's extravagant harvests alongside our declining health, it is slowly taking root across the globe.