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Dorothy Goodin | Feb 8, 2017

No ideal menu for healthiness exists yet, heart group says

Although eating breakfast and not eating late have been linked to a lower risk of heart disease, blood-vessel diseases and stroke, no clear guide regarding meal planning exists, the American Heart Association said in a scientific statement.

“There’s conflicting evidence about meal frequency,” Marie-Pierre St-Onge, writing group chair and associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University, said.

St-Onge said studies have shown that intermittent fasting and eating smaller, frequent meals throughout the day is a healthy approach. Another possibly good way to lose weight is fasting every other day, but the long-term effects have not been studied and it’s unclear whether such a plan can be maintained.

“I can see scenarios where intermittent fasting can backfire,” Penny Kris-Etherton, the statement co-author and nutrition professor at Penn State University, said.

Kris-Etherton said that theoretically, someone could fast one day, then eat two days’ worth of food the following day, which would not be a healthy approach. She warned against using intermittent fasting as a means of losing or maintaining weight until more research is done.

Kris-Etherton also speculated about the effects fasting on a regular basis, for times ranging from weeks to months, can have on someone who then resumes eating every day.

While consuming smaller meals on a more frequent basis has been shown to lower cardiovascular risk factors, the effects on weight are inconclusive. One study found that males had a lower risk of obesity when they ate more than four times daily, but another found a greater risk of weight gain.

Impracticality is another drawback to frequent meal eating.

“If you eat five to six meals, it’s hard to create a meal that’s so small that you aren’t overeating at each of the sessions,” St-Onge said.

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