Snacking is a nearly universal pastime—total global snack sales reached $374 billion in the year that ended March 2014—with chocolate beloved just about everywhere people snack.
Chocolate was the most common response, at 64 percent, in the first-ever global snacking study by Nielsen, which asked 30,000 people in 60 countries to reveal the snacks consumed in the last 30 day. The next most common responses, surprisingly, were fruits (62 percent) and vegetables (52 percent). Cookies (51 percent) and bread (50 percent) also wound up at the top of the global snack list.
People in the U.S. didn’t report quite as healthy eating habits as the rest of the snacking planet: salty chips topped the U.S. results, followed by chocolate, cheese, and cookies. And while Americans devour salty treats, James Russo, senior vice president of global consumer insights at Nielsen (NLSN), notes a certain contradiction in the survey responses: “The No. 1 one health attribute we want in our snacks—less sodium.” Oh, the snack hypocrisy.
Chocolate may be a global habit but on a country-by-country level people did make some distinct choices. Ice cream was the most common response in Peru and Chile, while yogurt finished on top in Mexico and Colombia. Nuts. seeds, and dumplings were popular in China, although still not as popular as No 1. chocolate and No. 2 fresh fruit. Bread and sandwich snacks were the top response in India.
France, as expected, showed a strong orientation towards dairy, with yogurt and cheese as the leading responses, and cheese also dominated in Russia, Greece, and the Netherlands. And let’s tip our hats to the healthy snacker of Israel and Romania, who reported vegetables as the most commonly snacked food in the last 30 days.
