Assessment of snacking
EVENTS
Snacks were defined as foods or drinks consumed between meals. Snacking events contained (1) a single food type, e.g. apple, or (2) multiple food types, e.g. apple, nut butter and coffee. For the single food snack type, drinks ≤ 50 kcal were excluded to ensure low-calorie drinks did not inflate snacking frequency. To determine the average snack frequency, the number of snacking occasions per participant per day was summed and the number of snacking occasions was averaged across all free-living days. Snacks were mapped onto a “Food Tree” consisting of a database of nutrient information arranged according to a hierarchical tree structure as follows: level 1 (9 food groups); level 2 (52 food groups); and level 3 (195 food groups). These foods were mapped on to the Composition of Foods Integrated Datase