The more snacks you eat, the more total calories you eat, up to 830 calories more per day.

Obese men who ate one snack a day consumed 330 more calories than obese men who didn’t eat any snacks. Eating two snacks a day added an additional 448 calories per day. And eating three snacks per day added an additional 830 calories per day.

A similar increase of calories was found for women, though the number of calories added was lower.

The lesson is: snacks don’t replace food from later meals, but are additional food you eat in a day. If you have a snack you’ll still eat a full meal later too.

Deciding to eat a snack is deciding to eat more total calories for the day. It’s certainly your choice to make, but people often think a snack won’t add calories because they think they’ll just eat less later. Unfortunately that’s not true.

And what do you eat when you snack? Carrots? Nope, you eat sweet, fatty foods. The amount of chips, crackers, popcorn and pretzels consumed has nearly tripled from the mid-1970s.