Even the word snack is bad for your health...

EVERYONE knows snacking is bad for your waistline – and now, psychologists have found the word itself is a health hazard.

They drew their conclusion after a study in which 80 women each ate pasta. Half were served their food in a small plastic pot, ate it standing up, and were told it was a snack. The others sat down with the same amount of pasta put on plates as a meal.

A little later, all were offered sweets, with the ‘snackers’ eating, on average, twice as many. The findings appeared in the research journal Appetite.

Deanne Jade, of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, said: ‘It is as if the brain does not pay the same amount of attention when it’s a snack.’