It's mid-afternoon, and the familiar crash is creeping in. Our eyelids feel heavy, our focus is slipping, and everything in us asks for a quick fix: something sweet to push us through the rest of the day.
What if that pick-me-up is making things worse?
It has been put to the test, many times. Across 31 tests with 1,259 people, sugar and other carbohydrates lifted no part of mood at any point after they were eaten. What they did bring, inside the first hour, was more tiredness and less alertness.
So the sweet thing gives us nothing, takes a little more, and leaves us reaching for the next one. It's a vicious cycle.
The way out is simple enough to fit in a lunch box. Every swap below follows one rule: protein and fat in place of sugar and starch. Foods rich in protein and healthy fats keep us feeling full and focused, and the tests back that up.
First, a swap at lunch
A word of honesty before the seven. The best afternoon is the one that needs no snack, and part of the slump would come anyway. It shows up even in people who have had no lunch and have lost track of the time. It is our body clock, and 5 Ways to Harness Your Energy and Beat the Afternoon Slump, linked below, has more on that.
Lunch can make it worse, though. The review that describes the dip is blunt about it: the dip "is certainly exacerbated by a high-carbohydrate lunch". A sandwich, a bowl of pasta, a baked potato: these set us up for it.
The night before counts as well. In a sleep laboratory, people kept short of sleep ate the same meals as when they were rested, and about 220 calories a day more in snacks.
So the first swap is the plate. Meat, fish or eggs at the centre, with the bread and pasta left off. Why Snacking and Small Meals Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss, linked below, has that finding, and why a snack is second best: the calories in it are not taken off the next meal.
Some days run long all the same. For those, here are seven swaps.
1. Swap the sweet bar for a boiled egg or two
When the craving comes, the bar in the machine is the nearest thing. An egg is the plainest answer to it: protein and fat, no sugar, and it comes in its own packaging.
What eggs do has been measured at breakfast. Thirty overweight women ate either eggs or a bagel, with the same calories in each. After the eggs they felt fuller, ate less at lunch, and went on eating less for the next day and a half.
Real-life swap. Boil six on a quiet evening and keep them in the fridge. A does it without a pan to watch. Two go in the bag each morning, with a twist of salt.
2. Swap flavoured yogurt for plain Greek yogurt
Flavoured yogurts may seem healthy, but many are loaded with hidden sugars. When 921 yogurts on British supermarket shelves were checked, the fruit and flavoured kinds came out at about 12 grams of sugar in every 100. Natural and Greek yogurt had about 5, and most of that was the milk's own.
Yogurt has also been tested in exactly our situation. Twenty women were given an afternoon snack with the same calories on different days: a high-protein yogurt, crackers, or chocolate. After the yogurt they were less hungry than after the chocolate, asked for dinner about half an hour later, and ate about 100 calories less of it.
Real-life swap. Plain, full-fat Greek yogurt, with nothing stirred in. It will taste sharp next to the sweet kind. That is the sugar we are no longer eating.
3. Swap the granola bar for cold meat
Granola bars might seem convenient, but many are packed with added sugars.
Granola started life as a health food. It was invented in 1863 at a health spa in Dansville, New York, under the name "granula". John Harvey Kellogg made a similar cereal and changed one letter to stay out of court. It came back in the 1960s, again as a health food. The bar is that cereal with honey, corn syrup or maple syrup added, and pressed.
A few slices of yesterday's roast are just as convenient, and they are food.
It is the same rule again. When eight men were given a snack between lunch and dinner, a high-protein one pushed their next meal back by 38 minutes. A high-carbohydrate one did not delay it at all.
Real-life swap. Cook a little more than we need at dinner. Slice what is left and wrap it, and it is tomorrow's snack: chicken, beef, pork, whatever was on the table.
4. Swap the cereal for eggs at breakfast
This swap happens hours before the slump, and decides a good part of it. Sugary cereal is a sweet in a bowl. Porridge is the usual "healthy" answer, and it is still a bowl of starch, often with honey or syrup on top.
The eggs-and-bagel test is the one to remember here. The calories were the same, and the egg breakfast was still paying off a day and a half later.
Real-life swap. Two or three eggs cooked in butter, however we like them. If mornings are a rush, the boiled ones from swap 1 are breakfast too.
5. Swap the "healthy" snack bar for a tin of fish
Snack bars often promise energy and nutrition, but many are just glorified sweets. The promise on the wrapper is what we are paying for.
A tin of keeps in a desk drawer for as long as a bar does, and it is all protein and fat. They have been called sardines in English since the early 1400s, possibly after Sardinia, whose waters were once said to be full of them.
Real-life swap. One tin in the drawer at work and one in the bag, with a fork. It is not elegant. It works.
6. Swap the sweet treat for a ten-minute walk
Here the swap is not food. Eighteen volunteers tried two answers to a flagging afternoon on different days: a sugary snack bar, or a brisk ten-minute walk. The walk left them with more energy and less tension for the next two hours. The bar gave a short lift, and an hour later they were more tired, and tenser.
The walk does not have to be long. Nineteen overweight adults sat for five hours straight on one day, and on another broke the sitting up with three minutes of easy walking every half hour. With the breaks they reported less fatigue. It was a small pilot, and it points the same way.
Take it towards the light if we can. Sixteen women spent half an hour after lunch by a bright window on one day, and in dim light on another. By the window they were less sleepy for at least the next hour, on two of the three measures used.
Dark chocolate is often offered as the grown-up version of the treat. In the yogurt test above, chocolate was one of the losers: hungrier afterwards, eating sooner, eating more. 8 Smart Ways to Fight Cognitive Decline with Food has what three years of cocoa did for thinking, which was nothing.
Chocolate is also caffeine. A hundred grams of the dark kind holds about 80 milligrams, as much as a single espresso, with a second, milder stimulant alongside it. It starts early: more than half of American two-to-five-year-olds, and about three-quarters of older children, take in caffeine on a given day. Fizzy drinks and tea are the main sources, and for children under twelve, flavoured dairy such as chocolate milk is another.
So the same swaps work after school. A child who comes home hungry gets the egg, the cold meat or the plain yogurt, on the same rule. And a glass of chocolate milk counts as a caffeinated drink.
It helps to know that the craving is learned. The Hidden Science of Sugar Cravings has why it turns up when it does, and how it fades when we feed it less often.
Real-life swap. When the craving for something sweet arrives, walk first. Round the block, up the stairs, out to the gate and back. Then see what is left of the craving.
7. Swap sugary drinks for water
Sugary drinks like fizzy drinks and sweetened coffees are some of the biggest culprits. A sweet drink is a sweet snack that does not even feel like food.
So hydrate with water, plain or infused, or with herbal teas like peppermint or chamomile. 7 Fun and Tasty Ways to Stay Hydrated Without the Boredom has how small a shortfall it takes to drag us down, and how to make water something we look forward to. As for the drinks sold as sugar-free, 10 Eye-Opening Benefits of Cutting Out Sugar and Choosing Healthier Sweeteners goes through the sweeteners one by one.
The other afternoon fix is caffeine, in a coffee or an energy drink. It has a price that arrives at night, and an energy drink usually adds sugar to it. Unstoppable Energy: 14 Ways to Stay Focused and Strong Every Day has what a strong cup six hours before bed did to sleep.
Real-life swap. A of water on the desk with a few slices of cucumber or a sprig of mint, or a pot of peppermint tea.
A word on nuts
Nuts are the swap in every list like this one, so they deserve a straight answer. They are a fair fallback: protein and fat, no sugar. Across 33 tests in which nuts were added to people's diets, body weight did not go up.
Two cautions. Nuts are easy to eat by the bagful, and most of them carry oxalate, a plant compound that locks up minerals. A small handful, then, when there is no egg to hand.
Have it ready
The weak point of every swap is the moment itself: the egg is at home, and the bar is in the machine.
The machine has had practice. The earliest one on record was built in the first century by Hero of Alexandria: a coin went in, and wine or holy water came out.
So keep the swap on hand for when the mid-day munchies hit. Boil the eggs while the kitchen is quiet. Cook extra at dinner. Put the tin in the drawer today.
The order to try them in
A list is not a plan, so here is the order for the moment the slump arrives.
First, water. A glass, before anything else.
Then, the walk. Ten minutes if we have them, three if we do not, outside or by a window.
Then, if the hunger is still there, food. The egg, the yogurt or the tin, eaten sitting down.
The next slump
It will come again tomorrow, mid-afternoon, with the same heavy eyelids. Part of it is the clock, and no food fixes the clock. A slump that lasts all day, every day, is a different question, and the first article linked below has where to start looking.
The rest is ours to change. When the craving arrives, we can ask the one question that sums all of this up: how can I swap this sugary snack for something that works with my body?
Tonight, boil six eggs.
Want to know why the afternoon dips at all? 5 Ways to Harness Your Energy and Beat the Afternoon Slump — sleep, a ten-minute walk, steady food, water, and the people and places that recharge us.
Wondering whether to snack at all? Why Snacking and Small Meals Can Sabotage Your Weight Loss — what eating little and often does to hunger, and why a snack is never taken off the next meal.
Do you know someone who visits the biscuit tin every afternoon? Send them this, and start them on the six eggs.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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