Wiki: Snack - upcScavenger

A snack is a small portion of Human food generally Eating between . Snacks come in a variety of forms including Food packaging snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at home.

Traditionally, snacks are prepared from a number of ingredients commonly available at home without a great deal of preparation. Often Lunch meat, , leftovers, nuts, , and Candy are used as snacks. With the spread of convenience stores, packaged snack foods became a significantly profitable business.

Snack foods are typically designed to be portable, quick, and satisfying. Food processing snack foods, as one form of convenience food, are designed to be less perishable, more durable, and more portable than prepared foods. They often contain substantial amounts of Sugar substitute, , and appealing ingredients such as chocolate, , and specially designed flavors (such as flavored ). Aside from the use of food additive, the viability of Food packaging so that food quality can be preserved without degradation is also important for commercialization.

A snack eaten shortly before going to bed or during the night may be called a "bedtime snack", "late night snack", or "midnight snack".

Asia

India

Snack foods are typically called or namkeens in North India. Snacks like pani puri and have become popular outside of India.

Most traditional snacks are home-made or sold by street vendors. Haldiram's is one of the top-selling and famous Indian snack brands around the world.

Indonesia

Kue

Indonesia has a rich collection of snacks called kue (cakes and pastry), both savoury and sweet. Traditional kue is usually made from rice flour, coconut milk, and coconut sugar, and is mostly steamed or fried rather than baked. Traditional kue are popularly known as kue basah ("wet kue") that has a moist, soft texture because of rich coconut milk. Kue kering (dried kue) is the local name for cookies. Indonesia has several variations of kue, both native and foreign-influenced.

Traditional crackers

Traditional crackers are called krupuk, made from bits of shrimp, fish, vegetables or nuts, which are usually consumed as a crunchy snack or an accompaniment to meals.

(2025). 9781462914913, Tuttle Publishing. . ISBN 9781462914913

These crispy snacks are sometimes added to main dishes for their crunchy texture; several Indonesian dishes such as gado-gado, karedok, ketoprak, lontong sayur, nasi uduk, asinan and bubur ayam are known to require specific types of krupuk as toppings. There are wide variations of krupuk available across Indonesia. The most popular ones would be krupuk udang () and krupuk kampung or krupuk putih (cassava crackers).

Other popular types include krupuk kulit (dried buffalo-skin crackers), emping melinjo (gnetum gnemon crackers), and kripik (chips/crisps), such as kripik pisang (banana chips) and keripik singkong (Cassava chips). Rempeyek is a flour-based cracker with brittle of peanuts, anchovies or shrimp bound by a crispy flour cracker. Rengginang or intip (Javanese people) is a rice cracker made from sun-dried and deep fried leftover rice.

Japan

Japan has a very wide range of snack foods, some of which are internationally popular, ranging from onigiri to melon pan.

Malaysia

Cincin - a deep fried dough pastry-based snack popular with East Malaysia's Muslim communities.
Roti john - a spiced meat omelette sandwich, popularly eaten for breakfast or as a snack.
Bakkwa (Chinese : 肉干) - literally "dried meat", bakkwa is better understood as barbecued meat jerky. While this delicacy is especially popular during the Chinese New Year celebration period, it is available everywhere and eaten year round as a popular snack.
Idli - made from a mashed mixture of skinned black lentils and rice formed into patties using a mould and steamed, idlis are eaten at breakfast or as a snack. Idlis are usually served in pairs with vadai, small donut-shaped fritters made from mashed lentils and spices, chutney, and a thick stew of lentils and called sambar.
Murukku - a savoury snack of spiced crunchy twists made from rice and urad dal flour, traditionally eaten for Deepavali in South India.
Vadai, vada or vades - is a common term for many different types of savoury fritter-type snacks originated from South India with a set of common ingredients. The most common ingredients are lentils, chillis, onions and curry leaves.
Tebaloi - is a sago biscuit snack which is traditionally associated with the Melanau people of Sarawak.
Pisang goreng - a common snack sold by street vendors, battered fried bananas are also served in a more elaborate manner at some cafes and restaurants as a dessert. Cempedak and various tuber vegetables are also battered and fried in the same manner as variations.

Taiwan

Taro ball - a traditional Taiwanese cuisine dessert made of taro.
Suncake (Taiwan) - is a popular Taiwanese dessert originally from the city of Taichung, Taiwan.
Aiyu jelly - is a jelly made from the gel from the seeds of the awkeotsang creeping fig found in Taiwan.
Pineapple cake - is a sweet traditional Taiwanese pastry containing butter, flour, egg, milk powder, sugar, and pineapple paste or slices.

Thailand

Miang kham – dried shrimp and other ingredients wrapped in cha plu leaves; often eaten as a snack or a starter.
Sai ua – a grilled sausage of ground pork mixed with spices and herbs; it is often served with chopped fresh ginger and chilies at a meal. It is sold at markets in Chiang Mai as a snack.

North America

Canada

In 2010, the average Canadian ate 300 snacks. Canadian identity is often associated with snack foods that are sold in Canada

(2025). 9781668012451, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781668012451

due to economic nationalism. Some Canadian snacks include ketchup chips, Smarties, Coffee Crisp, Kinder Surprise, Jos Louis, Big Turk, and .

United States

In the United States, a popular snack food is the peanut. Peanuts first arrived from South America via slave ships and became incorporated into African-inspired cooking on southern . After the Civil War, the taste for peanuts spread north, where they were incorporated into the culture of such popular events as baseball games and vaudeville theaters.

Along with popcorn (also of South American origin), snacks bore the stigma of being sold by unhygienic street vendors. The middle-class etiquette of the Victorian era (1837–1901) categorized any food that did not require proper usage of utensils as lower-class.

Pretzels were introduced to North America by the Netherlands, via New Amsterdam in the 17th century. In the 1860s, the snack was still associated with immigrants, unhygienic street vendors, and saloons. Due to loss of business during the Prohibition era (1920–1933), pretzels underwent rebranding to make them more appealing to the public. As packaging revolutionized snack foods, allowing sellers to reduce contamination risk, while making it easy to advertise brands with a logo, pretzels boomed in popularity, bringing many other types of snack foods with it. By the 1950s, snacking had become an all-American pastime, becoming an internationally recognized emblem of middle American life.

Middle East

Nuts are a staple of snacks in the Middle East. Among the many varieties available within the region, the most popular are Almond, Walnut, Hazelnut, Pine nut, and Pistachio. According to archeological evidence, nuts have been part of the Middle Eastern diet for centuries with ancient civilizations taking advantage of them for their health benefits. The health benefits of nuts comes from them being good sources of protein, healthy fats, fibers, vitamins and minerals. Nuts have now become a regular snack with a 119 billion dollar market as of 2022 that is projected to continue growing into 2023. Nuts can be prepared in a variety of ways, such as by roasting them with spices and lemon juice or incorporating them into food and desserts such as baklava, knafeh, and kibbeh.

Spreads and dips are eaten with Pita. The most popular dip in the middle east is hummus. Hummus is a blend of Chickpea, tahini, lemon, and garlic usually served with olive oil and paprika on top. Hummus's origins can be traced back to a Syrian cookbook from the 13th century. Other dips are also popularly served such as Muhammara and Baba ghanoush. Mouhammara is a walnut, tahini, and roasted red pepper dip served with olive oil on top originating from the Syrian city of Aleppo. Baba ganoush is a spread made from roasted eggplants, olive oil, and other vegetables. The origins of baba ganoush are not clear with many conflicting pieces of evidence pointing to multiple countries of origin. A sweet dip is Ashta, a cream made from milk, rose or orange blossom water, and ghee, which is usually accompanied with honey.

Many popular snacks in the Middle East are obtained from street vendors due to low cost and convenience of eating on the go. Many of these snacks consist of a protein with bread. Falafel consists of many little fried balls of ground chickpeas or Vicia faba with herbs, spices served in pita bread with tahini sauce and a choice of vegetables. Falafel is believed to originate from Egypt around 1000 years ago by Egyptian Copts. Shawarma is served in a similar fashion to falafel, pita bread with sauce and vegetables, but instead prepared by slowly cooking layers of meat on a spit before thinly slicing it.

Nutrition

Government bodies, such as Health Canada, recommend that people make a conscious effort to eat more healthy, natural snacks, such as fruit, , nuts, and cereal while avoiding high-calorie, low-nutrient junk food.

A 2010 study showed that children in the United States snacked on average six times per day, approximately twice as often as American children in the 1970s. This represents consumption of roughly 570 calories more per day than U.S. children consumed in the 1970s.

Types

Bagel with cream cheese
Bitterballen
Candy bar
Carrot Chips
Chaat
Cheese, a larger cold prepared snack
Cheese puffs
Chocolate-coated marshmallow treats
and
Cocktail sausage
Crackers
Drinkable yogurt
Edamame, fresh or dried
Granola bars
Falafel
Flour tortilla with a filling
Frozen berries
Fruit, whole, sliced, Fruit salad, Fruit cocktail
Ice cream
Jell-O
Jerky
Kaassoufflé
Latiao
Lunchables
Milkshake
Muffins
Nuts
Pound cake
Papadum
Pita bread
Popcorn
Pork rinds
Potato chips
Pakoda
Pretzels
Raisins
Ratatouille
Rice cake
Rice crackers, distinguished from the above
Samosa
Shortbread
Smoked salmon
Smoothie
Teacake
Trail mix
Vegetables (e.g., , celery, cherry tomatoes)
Yogurt

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