Doctor Claims Snacking Between Meals Is the Most Dangerous Daily Habit People Never Think to Question
UNITED STATES – A health educator and chiropractor is warning that one of the most common daily habits could be silently damaging people’s long-term health, and it has nothing to do with smoking, sugar, or junk food. According to Dr. Eric Berg, the real culprit is snacking between meals.
In a widely viewed online video, Dr. Berg argued that constant snacking is a habit most people have practiced their entire lives without ever questioning it, and that the majority of grocery store products, from granola bars and protein bars to chips and crackers, are specifically designed to keep people doing it. He noted that most doctors never warn patients about it and that no public health campaigns have targeted it either.
How Snacking Disrupts Insulin Levels
Dr. Berg’s central argument revolves around insulin and what happens to the body when it never gets a break from processing food. He explained that every time a person eats, the pancreas releases insulin, whose job is to push nutrients into cells and bring blood sugar back down.
When meals are kept to three a day with no snacking in between, insulin spikes three times and then drops back to lower levels between meals. Those windows of lower insulin allow the body to access stored fat for energy, repair cells, and reduce inflammation.
The problem with constant snacking, according to Dr. Berg, is that insulin never gets a chance to come back down. The body responds by developing what he describes as insulin resistance, a protective mechanism the body creates to guard against the excess insulin constantly circulating in the bloodstream.
Linked to Several Serious Conditions
Dr. Berg described insulin resistance as the hidden root cause behind a range of serious health conditions, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, polycystic ovary syndrome, and even certain cancers. He cautioned that by the time many people find out they have developed insulin resistance, they may already be diabetic, partly because doctors rarely test fasting insulin levels as a standard practice.
A separate expert backed up the weight-related side of the argument. Krzysztof Czaja, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said constant snacking is a key reason why losing body fat is so difficult. He explained that by eating continuously throughout the day, people never give the body a chance to tap into fat stores as an energy source, since it is constantly running on the sugar being consumed instead.
Dr. Berg added that meal timing is just one of ten biological signals that influence how the body functions overall, suggesting that the full picture of health extends well beyond simply what people eat.
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