|
 People eating fewer meals tended to eat the most at night, and to
drink alcohol with meals, both of which might contribute to their
higher body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to
height, the researchers said.
“The major hypothesis that can be taken away from this study is
interesting but not so mind-blowing - eating more frequently
throughout the day leads to a greater intake of healthier, lower
calorically-dense foods, which in turn leads to a lower overall
caloric intake and BMI,” said Elena Tovar, a clinical dietitian at
Montefiore Medical Center in New York who wasn’t involved in the
study.
“This just makes sense - eating more often staves off hunger so that
we don’t end up eating whatever we can get our hands on later on,
thereby making it more likely that the foods we eat are healthier,”
Tovar told Reuters Health in an email.
Researchers in the UK, at Imperial College London, and in the U.S.,
at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in
Chicago, analyzed data from 2,385 adults from a study conducted
between 1996 and 1999.
They found that participants who reported eating less than four
times during a 24-hour period had an average BMI of 29.0 and
consumed an average of 2,472 calories.
A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered normal weight and BMI between 25
and 29.9 is considered overweight. A BMI of 30 or higher is
considered obese.
Participants who ate six times or more over 24 hours had an average
BMI of 27.3 and consumed an average of 2,129 calories.
People who ate more often tended to consume foods that were lower in
calories and higher in nutritional value, such as vegetables, the
researchers found.
Meanwhile, people who ate less than four meals tended to consume
more calories in the evening, and to have alcohol in the evening.
This pattern is consistent with meals eaten at restaurants, where
food tends to be rich or fried and it’s harder to get fresh, healthy
foods, the authors note.
[to top of second column] |
“Our findings demonstrated that lower BMI levels in more frequent
eaters are associated with consumption of lower dietary energy
density and higher nutrient quality foods,” the authors write in the
Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
“Modifying eating behavior through more frequent meals of low
dietary energy density and high nutrient quality may be an important
approach to control epidemic obesity,” they note.
They also acknowledge limitations to the study, including the fact
that it doesn’t prove that timing or frequency of eating caused the
differences in BMI.
“Although this relationship requires further testing, it seems to
support the idea that eating large meals later in the day may not be
doing our waistlines any favors,” Tovar said.
Tovar highlighted the study authors’ speculation that the apparent
effect of meal timing might be related to an increase in insulin
sensitivity later in the day.
“I would be curious to see more research on this topic in
particular, especially because so many people these days are being
told by practitioners not to eat after certain times at night
without there being much science to back up these arbitrary
requests,” she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1KP70Gg Journal of the Academy of Nutrition
and Dietetics, online January 22, 2015.
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
