Sorry, need to start new thread; my messages re: above are being swamped in the ongoing, er, "conflict".
Based on some earlier posts mentioning snacking, I got curious about the "r eceived wisdom" that small, frequent meals are better for digestion/health than large ones. Is there solid science on this? I tend to question "recei ved wisdom" once it's called to my attention.
Any opinions, referrals?
TIA
HB
My bridge partner on Mondays and Fridays is a retired hospital dietician. I'll ask her this coming Monday (if I remember).
My bridge partner -- a retired hospital dietician -- says that small, frequent meals are indeed more healthy for you than a few larger meals. This keeps your blood sugar at a more constant level instead of up and down spikes.
However, she also indicated that each meal should be balanced with carbohydrates, protein, and fats; that constant snacking is not good; and that a nighttime meal after the traditional dinner time is not necessary.
That squares with what I've always understood. Apparently it also prevents fat from being deposited, because -- it is said -- smaller meals are more easily metabolized. Maybe that's the same thing you meant?
Not only "not necessary" but downright harmful in terms of keeping weight a t a good place. I saw a study of 3 groups that needed to lose weight. The y were divided into those who stopped eating at various times in the day -- 3:00 pm, 6:00 pm, and 9:00 pm. Guess which group lost the most? Yep! Bu t in the life that most of us lead, esp those who work and have families, 3 :00 in the afternoon is a little soonish. So settle for 6:00 and do more w alking or other exercise.
When I lived in Spain (somewhere back in the Cretacious) I couldn't get ove r their dinner habits! They started thinking about it around 10:00 pm & fin ally got to table 11-ish. But I didn't see obese people like those that ar e all too visible in the US. Sadly, most are from poor/minority background s & just haven't learned to eat right and/or can't afford good food.
HB
When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat Summary: When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers. New experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver -- the body's metabolic clearinghouse -- is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.
...For example, genes that encode enzymes needed to break down sugars rise immediately after a meal, while the activity of genes encoding enzymes needed to break down fat is highest when we fast. Consequently a clearly defined daily feeding schedule puts the enzymes of metabolism in shift work and optimizes burning of sugar and fat.
Panda, for one, has stopped eating between 8 pm and 8 am and says he feels great. "I even lost weight, although I eat whatever I want during the day," he says.
Also:
Time-Restricted Feeding without Reducing Caloric Intake Prevents Metabolic Diseases in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet Megumi Hatori, et al. Cell Metabolism 15, 848?860, June 6, 2012
SUMMARY While diet-induced obesity has been exclusively attributed to increased caloric intake from fat, animals fed a high-fat diet (HFD) ad libitum (ad lib) eat frequently throughout day and night, disrupting the normal feeding cycle. To test whether obesity and metabolic diseases result from HFD or disruption of metabolic cycles, we subjected mice to either ad lib or time-restricted feeding (tRF) of a HFD for 8 hr per day. Mice under tRF consume equivalent calories from HFD as those with ad lib access yet are protected against obesity, hyperinsulinemia, hepatic steatosis, and inflammation and have improved motor coordination. The tRF regimen improved CREB, mTOR, and AMPK pathway function and oscillations of the circadian clock and their target genes? expression. These changes in catabolic and anabolic pathways altered liver metabolome and improved nutrient utilization and energy expenditure. We demonstrate in mice that tRF regimen is a nonpharmacological strategy against obesity and associated diseases.
In short: frequent eating is bad for you. It screws up your metabolic processes and also makes you gain weight.
That is merely restating what I reported: constant snacking is bad. However, small, descrete, frequent meals are good. By "discrete" I mean that each meal has a start and end and that there is a time between meals when nothing is eaten. At least, that is what a professional hospital dietician (now retired) told me just yesterday.
Being retired, your friend may not be up on current research. The point here is that a fast period is beneficial to your metabolic system. The optimal feed/fast cycle confines meals within an eight-hour window.
It makes sense when you think about it - most people over time have not lived in a land of plenty. They had to work for their food, and there usually wasn't much of it. That's what our bodies (our metabolism) adapted to.
That was the sense in which I understood "small, frequent meals."
Err...that was then, ~50,000 years ago. I suspect our bodies have adapted to the more regular availability of food.
HB
Hi Higgs,
What does your body tell you? What do you feel the best doing? You have got all the feedback and control systems build right in.
My body, if I don't fast 3 to 4 hours before bed time, I wake up with higher blood sugar than I care for. (So I have to back on on eating a bunch of my favorite plants. Bugger!) And it pretty much doesn't matter what I eat that late, even zero carbs.
By the way, there is sometime to all this timing stuff. It is called Circadian Cycles or Rhythms
If I exercise right out of bed, my Blood Sugar spikes dangerous. If I exercise mid day or afternoon, my blood sugar drops a bit.
As my Allopath says, "one of the big mistakes we make in modern medicine is to place statistics of the general population on the individual." So, back to my original point, what do you feel best doing?
-T
d in the ongoing, er, "conflict".
e "received wisdom" that small, frequent meals are better for digestion/hea lth than large ones. Is there solid science on this? I tend to question "r eceived wisdom" once it's called to my attention.
[...]
Todd, this IS a family group!
HB
Easy access to food is much more recent than that, as is having most of the population living an urban pattern (where they buy food). There have been lots of famines in developed countries even in the last century.
But as for the frequency of meals thing, I got nothing.
You are a funny bunny! :-)
in the ongoing, er, "conflict".
"received wisdom" that small, frequent meals are better for digestion/health than large ones. Is there solid science on this? I tend to question "received wisdom" once it's called to my attention.
What science i have seen on the subject is poor quality, fragmented (multiple viewpoints supported) and inconsistent (multiple articles from the same author getting different conclusions). Oh well.
?-)
Crikey. No wonder crazy irregular work schedules were driving me batty in the late 1990s. My body could no longer cope with the wildly shifting food and work schedules.
Quite wrong. The number of genes does not change except as the cells that contain them increase or decrease. There is a fixed number of genes in each cell. Furthermore, the number of cells does not change over a daily cycle of eating and not eating.
For example, the liver constantly manufactures bile, which is stored in the gall bladder. The gall bladder releases bile into the small intestine when fats are present. Bile is an emulsifier that allows fats to combine with water-based digestive juices and be absorbed into the body. While genes play a role in the liver's function, they neither increase nor decrease during this process, a process that is ongoing and not fluctuating.
Similarly, the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas produce insulin in response to the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood. In doing so, the number of cells in the pnacreas neither increase nor decrease; they merely become more or less active.
...
i see no claim about the number of cells increasing or decreasing above. only the claim that the number of genes active increases/decreases in certain circum- stances...
songbird
Did revolving shift work in the late 70's. Three days, three swings, three mids, three days off, and start over again. Messed me up something terrible.
Same I have seen. And I think each person response is wildly individual. I really think Higgs would be best served by just seeing what works best for him
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