The author's survey of the effect of snacks on the appetite of 131 one-and-a-half-year-old and three-year-old children has revealed the following:
1. A high percentage of the children and the people in charge of them took all kinds of snacks. Fifty per cent of them took potato chips, snack cakes, arare, sembei, milk, ice cream, mineral water, fruit juice, bananas, water melons, yakisoba, buns, pudding, etc.
2. A large percentage of both the children and the people in charge of them took drops, biscuits, lactic acid beverages, yoghurt and pudding.
3. In the case of the three-year-old children, caramel, chocolate and chewing-gum were their main favorites, the percentage being 40-50%. The same was the case with the one-and-a-half-year-old children, though the percentage was lower.
4. Coffee and black tea were drunk by a high percentage of the people in charge of the children. The same was true of Japanese style confection.
5. Twenty per cent of the children, satiated with snacks, left almost all of their usual meals uneaten, and 55%-60% managed to eat them though they left over part of them. The intake of snacks tends to diminish the appetite.
6. With regard to cakes, Japanese unbaked cakes, chewing gum, candy, chocolate, which are popularly referred to as ‘undesirable snacks’, those who took them managed to eat their usual meals but left some portion untouched, while those who did not left hardly anything uneaten.
7. Concerning the effect of lactic acid beverages on appetite, many of those who were given them at random did not feel like eating their usual meals and left most of them untouched, while on the other hand many of those who were given them in a fixed quantity and at a fixed time ate almost all of their usual meals, leaving hardly anything untouched.
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