Hello, and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Reinagle. I recently

got an email from Gary, he's a long time podcast listener, asking how to decide whether

or not a snack food can be considered healthy, and he attached snapshots of several different

types of chips and crackers to his email. Is there a barometer that you use to rule a

snack food in or out? He wrote, I try to limit saturated fats, added sugars, sodium, and

refined flowers, and my meals and snacks. And these snacks all seem to be somewhat benign,

but they're obviously processed. So at what point do they cross over from a healthy snack

food to a junk food? Well, I had to laugh as I scrolled through the photos that Gary sent

because every single one of them is either in my cupboard right now or has been very

recently. Apparently, Gary and I have similar tastes in snacks. Over the years, I've received

many variations on this question. Is this chip, or yogurt, or energy bar, or cookie, or

sweetener, or whatever better than that one? And whenever I'm trying to evaluate the

healthfulness of a food, I have found it useful to ask three questions. Number one, how

much are you going to be eating? Number two, what will you be eating it with? And to

say, number three, what are you not eating because you're eating this instead? So let's tackle

these one by one. Number one, how much are you eating? Sometimes we fall into the trap

of thinking that we can eat more of something simply because it's healthy or healthy

error. So if we select a tortilla chip that contains flax seed or a cookie that's sweetened

with honey or a bread that contains oat bran, somehow we rationalize that we can have

a larger serving or perhaps enjoy it more often. A healthy snack may offer some nutritional

advantages. It might have more fiber or more omega-3s, for example. But it may not be any

lower in calories or sodium or sugar. In fact, it might even be higher. So you'd still

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