How Britain snacks: what the national data shows
Two official UK datasets describe British snacking. Neither answers the question people usually ask.
Trend check
Whether the thing everyone is talking about actually stands up.
What this section is for
Two jobs. Checking whether a claim doing the rounds holds up, and reading the published data on how Britain actually eats rather than how it is said to.
The national surveys are free, detailed and almost nobody writes about them. How Britain snacks is built from them.
When we check a trend we criticise the claim, never the outlet that reported it, and we say plainly when the honest answer is that nobody knows yet. That is set out in how we write.