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For the past year I have drastically changed my eating habits (for better if I may say so) and I'm currently training twice a week and doing cardio once/twice per week. However, I still occasionally fall for snacks.

Is there a good scientific reason to prefer one over another. E.g. 50g bag of Lays vs 50g Snickers bar? From what I can see on the wrappings, calories are more or less same. Only difference for me is that chips last longer.

So except trying to avoid them, is any of the categories "more healthy" than the other and why?

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  • I would not put Lays not Snicker on the list of healthy. Sugar is more likely to cause a spike and make you hungry later but fat is worse for you overall. Are the chips baked?
    – paparazzo
    Jun 14, 2015 at 20:57
  • you can follow your diet for 6 six days(no lays / snickers) and then for the 7th day reward yourself a bar of snickers / small bag of lays. instead of having several snickers and lays per week.
    – Ker p pag
    Jun 15, 2015 at 6:36
  • It's also better to snack later in the day. If you have it early on you'll get more cravings throughout the day.
    – son15
    Jun 15, 2015 at 9:33

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The bad sides of Lays is having so much fat(also trans fat) and potato is starch, so not so much difference from sugar. The fat in snickers is from peanut and its a good fat source. The only bad thing in Snickers is sugar. In this two i absolutelly chose snickers. But for snacks i sugeest u to try protein bars. They are delicious and healthy and the most importantly, it doesnt break ur diet at all.

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  • Starch is not similar to sugar, chemically and metabolically, they are very different. Regarding protein bars, yes they do have protein, but most also have loads of sugar.
    – Mårten
    Jun 15, 2015 at 13:23
  • Of course not similar but has high glycemic index as well as sugar.
    – CanESER
    Jun 15, 2015 at 13:31
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Depends on your lifestyle, if you eat sugar very rarely, then maybe the snickers bar is better, but I'd dare to say that sugar is worse than salt for most people.

Sugar is not just calories with high glychemic index, it's 50% fructose, which can only be metabolized in the liver. This can cause fat accumulation in and around the liver which is most likely the cause of diabetes and metabolic syndrome (behind fat in itself is not dangerous in that regard, but it tends to go correlate because high calorie intake go along with high sugar intake.)

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  • could you recommend good literature about metabolic/chemical topics - I seek higher knowledge about nutrition and how substances affect the body.
    – zeratul021
    Jun 22, 2015 at 18:22
  • Not really, unless you know swedish :) Robert Lustig is the main advocate for the fructose theory, it's actually quite new science, but there are more and more studies pointing towards fructose being The main cause of metabolic disease. He has a long lecture called "Sugar - The Bitter Truth" on youtube.
    – Mårten
    Jun 23, 2015 at 5:59
  • I watched this one last week ago - thanks anyway.
    – zeratul021
    Jun 23, 2015 at 8:08
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No, there is no food that you can't eat occasionally just because you wan't to be healthy doesn't means you can't eat McDonalds or coke nevermore.

I won't say about the difference of salt vs sugar because you probably know about them and there's a lot of info on them on internet.

But i will say that if you aren't professional athlete or bodybuilder you don't have to worry about this things, i know that media keeps trying to scare everybody but the true is that even if you eat a very salty or sweet food occasionally will not harm your health.

Just choose what you like the most, but don't eat too much and too often.

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