Morning snacking may be damaging your diet

Snacking between breakfast and lunch might ding your diet more than snacking at other times of the day, a new study suggests.

Women taking part in a weight loss study who ate a midmorning snack lost an average of 7 percent of their body weight over the course of a year, whereas women who did not snack before lunch lost 11 percent of their body weight.

The urge to grab a snack during the relatively short time between breakfast and lunch could be a sign of generally less healthy eating, the researchers said.

Midmorning snacking "might be a reflection of recreational or mindless eating habits, rather than eating to satisfy true hunger," said study researcher Anne McTiernan, director of the prevention center at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

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