Finally! Something on Metabolism!

So, I was going to save this chunk of my research for a later blog post and continue on with reporting about chronic diseases and the other health effects of eating smaller meals more frequently vs. one larger meal. However, I think that this research is perfect in contradicting what the media is saying about when you eat smaller meals you metabolism will be more efficient. Well guess what, it doesn't work like that.

Despite what the research says, there are a few out there who really do believe that eating small meals through the day can be the secret to weight management. Venice Nutrition is one of those companies. If you register with Venice Nutrition, they will give you a customized diet plan that will maintain your blood glucose levels. The Venice Nutrition company is what I would call an empire, you can become a certified coach, or even sign up for your office to be "coached". While, Venice Nutrition emphasizes the importance of eating consistently through the day, they also emphasize eating an optimal ratio. Doesn't sound that bad right?

Well, I would not be so quick to sign up, in a 2005 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the researchers found that eating less more frequently did not change your energy expenditure or resting metabolic rate. The study was conducted among ten obese health women and it was a cross over trial design. Women were originally given certain instruction to continue on their regular diet, and then during phase 2, they were asked to eat either 7,4,9,3,5,8,5,9,8,4,3,4,7 and 6 times each day. Then they were asked to fast before coming for their laboratory visits.

The researchers looked at a variety of factors related to metabolism such as energy intake, appetite management and resting metabolic rate. The energy intake for participants was lower when women were eating regularly compared to the irregular meal pattern. Even though the subjects were consuming more, their appetite measurement and assessments showed no difference. I thought that looking at these two aspects of the results were really interesting. Even though when eating an irregular meal plan the women didn't feel an increase sensation of satiety, they still consumed higher numbers in calories.

Now that you know more about what these women were taking in, you might want to know if there was a difference in how their body was using those calories? Well, there was not a big difference among these subjects. The study suggests that this conclusion might not be applicable to healthy weight women because insulin sensitivity can blunt the thermic effect of food. There are also other possible issues with this study. Such as, information bias that could make it seem as if the women are eating more during the irregular meal pattern phase. If the women forget to log or underestimate their consumption, it warps the data to seem that there is no effect of eating at irregular times during the day.  This could be one possible reason why there was no difference among the legs of the study.

In the same volume of the journal, there was an editorial written by Elizabeth Parks and Megan McCory discussing how research focused can be so varied. In the editorial, the authors commented on how this study design had distinct features, such as directing participants to eat a certain meals each day. Another strength was that the participants were given a test meal at the beginning and end of each phase, and that examining how the test meal was metabolized was how the researchers came across their results.




Parks and McCory ask these three important questions about the relationship between when we eat, how often we eat and the link between obesity in their editorial.









Reviewing this study and some of the information presented from Venice Nutrition made me think about this entire project. Although I think it is important to change the way that health is marketed and shift this away from looking thin towards maintaining good health, however this research enforced that it is not how often we are eating, but what we are eating. I think that this is something that is overlooked in the "myth" of fasting vs. feasting. It is also extremely important not to overlook the broader implications of research in regarding this myth, maybe there is a link between extra meals and obesity.


References:

Farshci, Hamid R., Moira A. Taylor, and Ian A. MacDonald. "Metabolic Effects of Regular Meal  Frequency." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 8 Jan. 2005. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

Parks, Elizabeth J., and Megan A. McCory. "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." When to Eat and How Often? American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Jan. 2005. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

"Why Venice Nutrition." Venice Nutrition. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.