Seventeen meals per day might not be such a bad idea

Want to lose weight without reducing your calorie intake?

Here’s the theory: If calorie consumption is spread out over six meals instead of three, metabolism gets more stimulation and more calories are burned.

Here’s the test: In a study reported last year in the British Journal of Nutrition, overweight subjects were restricted to the same low daily calorie intake for eight weeks. Half the subjects ate three meals each day, while the other half ate six.

Results: Both groups lost equivalent amounts of weight, and appetite control was similar in both groups.

Researchers concluded that the theory of a speedier metabolism with twice the meals doesn’t hold up.

So…how about 17 meals per day? What then?

About 20 years ago, University of Toronto researchers divided subjects into two groups to test two diets with identical calorie intake. One group ate a three-meal diet, and another ate a “nibbling diet” of 17 snacks each day.

Unfortunately, this study paid no attention to weight loss. But when carbohydrate tolerance and cholesterol levels were measured, the results were striking.

Subjects in the nibbling diet reduced total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, apoB (an LDL protein), and average insulin level, compared to subjects in the three-meal group.

So there actually might be some value to a nibbling diet. Although it would be very hard for most of us to keep caloric intake low when snacking once every waking hour.

Just one visit to Starbucks would end that diet in a hurry!

To Your Good Health,

Jenny Thompson

Sources:
“The Claim: Eat Six Small Meals a Day Instead of Three Big Ones” Anahad O’Connor, New York Times, 3/21/10, nytimes.com
“Nibbling Versus Gorging: Metabolic Advantages of Increased Meal Frequency” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 321, No. 14, 10/5/89, nejm.com