Sneak that snack

It's mid-afternoon, your energy is flagging and your stomach is rumbling. It's time for a quick bite. Nine out of ten of us regularly eat between meals - getting through more than half a million tonnes of chocolate and 12billion packets of crisps a year.

As a nation, we're snacking the wrong way. While eating five or six times a day is the best way to curb hunger, our present choices of what to eat are doing untold harm. We're nearing an obesity epidemic, cholesterol levels among Britons are alarmingly high and our rate of coronary heart disease is among the highest in Europe.

So how do you have a healthy 4pm fix? Nutritionist Dr Jennifer Poulter takes us through our favourite snacks and what we should be having instead.

Chocolate or mousse?

Dr Poulter says: 'Chocolate is laden with calories and saturated fat. People who eat it regularly get used to the intake of sugar and start to feel they need it.

'To wean yourself off, look for something that will provide the sweetness fix without the fat. Good alternatives include a light chocolate mousse or even Jaffa Cakes. Even though both still have high calorie and sugar levels, they are much lower in fat, especially the saturated kind, than a piece of chocolate.'

Crisps or nuts?

Dr Poulter says: 'Crisps are a high-fat, high-calorie snack and there are alternatives. Tortilla chips have lower levels of saturated fat and mark a step in the right direction, but are still far from ideal.

'Nuts are a better option. Each type of nut has different nutritional benefits. They can be high in fat, but in the main it's the unsaturated variety which, in the right amounts, is good for you.

'Nuts are calorific and won't help with the obesity problem, but if you're going to have a fatty snack it's much better to have one with unsaturated fats. To avoid fat almost completely, rice-based snacks are the answer.'

Pies or sandwiches?

Dr Poulter says: 'The pastry and meat makes pies and sausage rolls among the worst offenders for calories and saturated fat levels. If you want something that is just as filling, bread-based alternatives are good.

Ignore the low-carb, no-bread Atkins mantra: try sandwiches made from brown or wholemeal bread. The trick is to make your own - a home-made chicken salad sandwich can have up to four times less saturated fat and half the calories of a supermarket one.

'Use lean ham or low-fat cream cheese for flavour, bulked up with lettuce, cucumber and tomato.'

Cakes or scones?

Dr Poulter says: 'While you can make fat-free sponges, most cakes and muffins are laden with hydrogenated fat from hard margarine, which is very high in saturated fat. They are also very high in sugar. A muffin will often contain more than 700 calories.

'If you want a similar but less harmful sweet option, ginger nut biscuits, scones and currant buns are good choices. They are still high in sugar and thus calories, but are much lower in fat.'

Fizzy drinks or juice?

Dr Poulter says: 'From a saturated fat perspective, these are not guilty as they contain none. But they are calorie-rich due to the large amounts of sugar. If you feel the need for a fizzy drink, it's best to move to a diet version of one.

'Even better would be fruit juice - it counts as one of your recommended five portions of fruit and veg a day and is packed with vitamins and minerals.

'But the sugar in fruit becomes a lot more potent in juice form, making the drink calorific and bad for teeth. The best betweenmeal drink is water.'