PHOTOS: Check Out These Healthy "Junk Food" Brands Trending With Gen Z

• A number of healthy snack brands are marketing themselves as junk food. 
• They're targeting Gen Z, the generation that often prefers snacks over meals. 
• Here's a list of seemingly unhealthy but healthy snacks trending with Gen Z. 

Three square meals a day are out. Snacking all day is in — for Gen Z at least. 

Gen Z-ers are more likely to snack between meals than their millennial counterparts, according to data from the Institute of Food Technologists. 

And they're particular about what they're snacking on.

While a recent survey by investment firm Piper Sandler found that legacy snack brands like Lays, Goldfish, and Cheez-Its are still their top picks, according to Piper Sandler's survey, other reports suggest that Gen Z is mindful of eating healthily, too.

Now, a wave of snack brands has emerged that appears to combine the healthy attributes of being low-sugar, plant-based, or 'better-for-you' — but come packaged with a Gen Z edginess to look like junk food.

Andrea Hernandez, who writes a Substack newsletter on snacking and is known in the virtual world as Snaxshot, contends that the days of 'better-for-you' snacks marketed as 'better-for-you' — items like charcoal -nfused cheddar cheese or adaptogenic cookies — are long gone. 

Younger generations are gravitating towards cookies, chips, and beverages that look — and taste— indulgent, even if they're still healthy. 

"It's very in line with Gen Z making the pristine Instagram grid obsolete. It's normalizing the fact that we all have issues, need authentic personas, and a snack is just a snack," she said.  "The pendulum is swinging back from the over-correction of making things functional."

Take the recent success of canned water brand, Liquid Death, which is on track to earn $130 million in revenue this year, according to Bloomberg.

Peter Pham, a venture capitalist who invested in the brand long before it became popular, believes the brand has found success by capturing the attention, and dollars, of Gen Z. 

"We see younger generations shifting toward healthier consumption habits — they're drinking less, ingesting less sugar, and so on. At the same time, the healthy food and beverage space has historically been a stale category filled with boring brands." 

Pham added, "this creates a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for disruptive brands who know how to tap into culture and talk to Gen Z and digital natives." 

Insider surveyed more than 20 Gen Z-ers to pull together a list of trending snack brands that pose as junk food but are actually…kind of healthy.