Snack Food

Book excerpt: Rather than containing for the most part fairly detailed food science and technology intended for daily use and reference by food scientists and technologists, this book is designed for use by a much wider range of readers concerned with a particular and rapidly expanding area of food production, promotion, marketing, and packaging. A certain amount of basic detail is provided to enable relatively rough estimates of the production methods and packaging facilities necessary to enable new or improved items to be made, but the overall emphasis is on the wide range of food products that can now quite legitimately be regarded as coming within the broad definition of foods used as snacks, as contrasted with main meals. Thus, we start with the basic requirements to be met in a snack food whatever its nature, and follow with the great variety of items nowadays used 3..'l snacks or as adjuvants to snacks, concluding with an assessment of nutritional consequences of the growth of "snacking" or "browsing," and with the special packaging requirements of snack foods.