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A Japanese Style of Snacking That Diverts Cravings for Oreos
Prevent mindless munching with sanji no oyatsu
It seems that time at home has led to more people purchasing unhealthy processed foods: Mondelez, the maker of Oreos, announced that cookie and cracker sales shot up nearly 30% in the first quarter of 2020. And lots of people are concerned about the repercussions of easier access to a junk-stocked kitchen.
Nabisco/Mondelez is well aware of the concern surrounding their foods and has a “snacking made right” campaign to try and regain consumer trust. As part of their campaign, they released a video outlining tips for better mindful snacking with Oreos. Their tips included:
- Portion out your snack, for example by placing three Oreos on a plate to resist the urge to eat more.
- Smell your Oreos before eating it, to focus on taste.
- Pause and put the Oreo back on the plate between bites, to pace yourself.
Are you kidding me?
I turned to my sister who was sitting next to me and showed her the video. We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the advice but also felt a bit of frustration that these companies weren’t actually trying to be helpful, just producing useless fluff under the guise of being socially responsible. Is there a better way to snack without throwing it out of our pantry?
“Well, you think about America and they have snack time, but there’s actually no real defined time to it,” my sister mused. “But when you think about snack time in Japan, it’s always 3 p.m. Why is that?”
What is the 3 o’clock snack?
Sanji no oyatsu in Japanese reads “the 3 o’clock snack.” It’s not necessarily a proverb or an idea on how to snack, exactly, but behind the history of the phrase is a more deeply ingrained idea as to what mindful snacking is.
Snack in Japanese is read 御八つ (oyatsu), and its origin is said to be from the time 八刻 or “yatsudoki” used in the Edo period, which refers to the time from 2 to 4 p.m. So “oyatsu” used…
