Why is it now so normal to snack? For most of human history, people didn't eat between meals. But, over the past 30 years, the snack industry has rewritten the rules. Big Food has pumped out adverts telling us that we're constantly hungry and pointing to their products as the fix . As a result, sweet treats have been repositioned as a daily must-have, rather than an occasional indulgence. In the UK, 95 per cent of people now snack twice a day and nearly a quarter of daily calories come from snacks.