When snacks attack, learn how to fight back

We know we’re addicted. But who’s to blame? Our preschool teachers, of course. After play time and nap time, they brought us snack time. How we loved those graham crackers and mini milk cartons.

While we were growing up, everyone was doling out goodies: pizza bites and fruit roll-ups (which we count as healthful) or the old standby Animal Crackers (and by old, we mean stale). Grandma gave us cookies to fatten us up, and the baby sitter shared her chips to hush us up.

Even Jenny Craig “forces” us to have two snacks a day from a menu that includes S’more Bars and Banana Foster Cheesecake.

The food companies have created 100-calorie portions to lure us into pretending we can control how much we snack. And legend has it that there’s a woman in Chicago who eats just one package at a time. But that may be an urban myth.

So tempt your QuirkOut taste buds and learn about things women do to feed their snacking habits.

IT’S JUST NUTS

We try to time our meals so we don’t get hungry while running errands or finding ourselves more than five steps from a vending machine. But it doesn’t always work out.

Missing a meal makes our stomachs growl louder than a flight attendant telling Alec Baldwin to turn off his cellphone. But if we carried around a fridge and microwave, we’d feel like some kind of nut. Thank goodness Isabella has a nutty QuirkOut solution: She always has almonds close by.

There’s a bag in her purse, in the glove compartment and at her desk. “A handful takes the edge off until I get to the next meal,” she explains. We reminded her that they have lots of calories, but she protested, “It’s the good kind of fat.”

Sorry, Isabella, but that’s just nuts. Any way you think about it, the good kind of fat looks the same as the bad kind of fat once it shows up on our thighs — and our thighs show up in a bathing suit.

PRIVATE STASH

Take a tour of Cheryl’s bedroom and discover a secret hiding place inside her armoire.

Her naughty secret has nothing to do with those kinds of urges. No, she stashes goodies for another kind of craving.

“At night my husband and I retire to our room, lie in bed … and open up a big bag of Cheetos.” 

With teenage boys at home, the chips get scarfed down before they make it to the kitchen cabinet. So she hides them with her
unmentionables and doesn’t mention she bought them.

We get it, Cheryl. Who hasn’t felt lust in the snack aisle while flirting with the Doritos and Fritos? And the new BLT-flavored potato chips have made grown men weep. So, thank you, Lay’s, for doing what our marriage counselors couldn’t — making our husbands actually show emotion.

MOVIE MADNESS

Shannon’s kids can’t wait to see the big blockbuster: Disney Pixar’s Hunger Games 2: The Kirstie Alley Story. (That’s going to be one heck of a Happy Meal toy.)

After mortgaging the house to pay for tickets and concession food, she faces the worst part of the ordeal. Her kids dive headfirst into those giant bags of candy, resulting in a massive sugar high that lasts the entire weekend.

Shannon’s solution is to bring paper cups to the theater and ration out the treats. When the cups are empty, she refills them at a slow pace. At the end of the film, the leftovers go into a zip-lock bag so they won’t spill in her purse.

The result? Happy, calm children and a special bonus when she discovers the half-eaten Reese’s Pieces during the week. She gets to gorge on them in one sitting without any parental guidance. Oh, yeah, this QuirkOut rating is PG.