Throughout History Humans Only ate Once A day

[BeeBoop]

I thought this article was interesting. I found it on reddit. It wasn't until the invention of the light bulb that we added dinner, and breakfast came about as a commercial success. Just maybe with the way obesity is in the modern world, being around food three times a day isn't natural for a Human?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692

 

[TheUnk]

I didn't read it yet but the first thing that came to my mind was reading that eating several small meals a day was better due to it keeping your metabolism up?

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I didn't read it yet but the first thing that came to my mind was reading that eating several small meals a day was better due to it keeping your metabolism up?

Not true - research shows no difference in baseline metabolism due to meal frequency.

 

[Murloc]

meh I don't think the romans set a good example, they were influenced by culture as much as we are.

Also I don't think there is a natural. You can think about the change in eating habits as evolution. What is unnatural about anything that a natural system (humans) do?
I bet other animals change their habits too if you put them in a different environment.

Eating three times a day imho is better to avoid fat because the body adjusts to having food security. Or maybe it's not and it's just an habit and that's why you get hungry with an empty stomach.
The cause of fatness is that 100 years ago most people were hard-working farmers and didn't have more calories than they needed.

My damn cat sneezed on teh computer screen, it's difficult as hell to clean that.

 

[Corporate Thug]

I thought this article was interesting. I found it on reddit. It wasn't until the invention of the light bulb that we added dinner, and breakfast came about as a commercial success. Just maybe with the way obesity is in the modern world, being around food three times a day isn't natural for a Human?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692

society changes too...I doubt that hunter gathers "worked" 40-50-60 hours a week. I wouldn't need breakfast either if I could lay wake up at 11, lay around til noon, go hunting for a couple of hours, then eat what I killed and go to bed. I'm joking BTW.

Truth is a majority of the daily activities have shifting to sedentary things which makes it very hard to burn calories.

It's not the frequency of meals that make people obese its the what they eat and the quantity. Crap food is cheap and easy, making it easy to overindulge.

 

[Corporate Thug]

Not true - research shows no difference in baseline metabolism due to meal frequency.

SC, got a link? Every trainer throws this 6 meals a day thing at me like it's gospel.

 

[Cstefan]

SC, got a link? Every trainer throws this 6 meals a day thing at me like it's gospel.

Trainers are really just mostly useless.
http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/jur-online/PDF/2003/goodman-larson-et-al.pdf

Thats just the first hit but you can go to pubmed too. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23404961

 

[BeeBoop]

society changes too...I doubt that hunter gathers "worked" 40-50-60 hours a week. I wouldn't need breakfast either if I could lay wake up at 11, lay around til noon, go hunting for a couple of hours, then eat what I killed and go to bed. I'm joking BTW.

Truth is a majority of the daily activities have shifting to sedentary things which makes it very hard to burn calories.

We ate more, Americans at least, during the industrial revolution because it was hard labor and never got off of that. It was one of the things that paved way to breakfast, see article as reference, and just haven't transitioned out of that eating pattern now that most jobs are not that labor intensive.

It's not the frequency of meals that make people obese its the what they eat and the quantity. Crap food is cheap and easy, making it easy to overindulge.

I partially agree but it's not as simple as that. Yes, the amount of food or calories you eat in a day matters but the average Americans are exceeding their calorie intake from both breakfast and lunch. By dinner time, they are eating way too. If moderation was that simple, we wouldn't have an obesity problem. I am under the belief that people eat until they are full and that biological marker of being full does not do a good job of dividing your calories throughout the day. Yes, there are people who learn to eat in moderation but learning to eat that way is different from how large your genes made your stomach size.

 

[BeeBoop]

SC, got a link? Every trainer throws this 6 meals a day thing at me like it's gospel.

There has been a lot of research into intermittent fasting, scientific term for eating once a day or eating every other day, in the past few years and they all have something positive to say about it. The only thing that I have ever seen to have something negative about IF is that, it might not be a sustainable eating pattern for some people but that goes along with most diets in this country anyway. What matters most is an eating pattern that works for your lifestyle and continuing to do that same pattern until it because engraved into your hormones.


Here is a Documentary on IF. Dr. Michael Mosley goes around to research facilities to find out more about the subject.
http://documentaryheaven.com/eat-fast-and-live-longer/


Here's a peer review paper on Intermittent Fasting vs the same daily calorie deficit. Papers might be hard to read so you can just skip down to the conclusion. Very easy to read those when I come across such papers. End result was that both groups lost the same amount of weight but people who practiced IF, retained more muscle mass.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00873.x/full

 

[SociallyChallenged]

SC, got a link? Every trainer throws this 6 meals a day thing at me like it's gospel.

There are many, but see the one below. I've got a busy week, but will see if I can find several more.

It doesn't change metabolism, but it can change perception of satiety. There's a difference. If you're satiated, you're more likely to abide by your diet and therefore lose weight.

In fact, eating more frequently has been shown to be bad for you in terms of dental care. Pick your poison. I eat 2-3 meals per day, as intermittent fasting hasn't provided enough valid research for me to reduce that.

 

[BeeBoop]

There are many, but see the one below. I've got a busy week, but will see if I can find several more.

It doesn't change metabolism, but it can change perception of satiety. There's a difference. If you're satiated, you're more likely to abide by your diet and therefore lose weight.

In fact, eating more frequently has been shown to be bad for you in terms of dental care. Pick your poison. I eat 2-3 meals per day, as intermittent fasting hasn't provided enough valid research for me to reduce that.

My friend who's a dentist told me the same thing. Doesn't really sound like we were made to eat so many times in a day but I agree with you that what matters most is if you are satisfied and getting the results you want from your eating habit.

 

[Blackjack200]

It doesn't change metabolism, but it can change perception of satiety. There's a difference. If you're satiated, you're more likely to abide by your diet and therefore lose weight.

My personal experience has been that eating fewer, larger meals can still leave me feeling satisfied.

I'm hoping a bigger factor for me will be fiberous vegetables. When I began my diet I had none at all. Finally a couple of weeks ago I started working some broccoli into dinner. Yesterday I had a pound of broccoli with my breakfast and dinner (half with each meal). And this morning I had a pound of spinach. It seems to be working so far... we'll see.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

My personal experience has been that eating fewer, larger meals can still leave me feeling satisfied.

I'm hoping a bigger factor for me will be fiberous vegetables. When I began my diet I had none at all. Finally a couple of weeks ago I started working some broccoli into dinner. Yesterday I had a pound of broccoli with my breakfast and dinner (half with each meal). And this morning I had a pound of spinach. It seems to be working so far... we'll see.

It definitely has something to do with what you're actually eating. Fibrous veggies tend to be very filling, in addition to fibrous complex carbs and solid fats from natural sources (avocados, nuts, seeds). When dieting, you definitely have to be aware what's gonna fill you up.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

SC, got a link? Every trainer throws this 6 meals a day thing at me like it's gospel.

Here's also the International Society of Sports Nutrition official stance. They have several claims - some positive, some negative - about increasing meal frequency and cite other resources to support it. The link is available here: http://www.jissn.com/content/pdf/1550-2783-8-4.pdf

 

[HeXen]

My damn cat sneezed on teh computer screen, it's difficult as hell to clean that.

yeah i hate that.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

There has been a lot of research into intermittent fasting, scientific term for eating once a day or eating every other day, in the past few years and they all have something positive to say about it. The only thing that I have ever seen to have something negative about IF is that, it might not be a sustainable eating pattern for some people but that goes along with most diets in this country anyway. What matters most is an eating pattern that works for your lifestyle and continuing to do that same pattern until it because engraved into your hormones.


Here is a Documentary on IF. Dr. Michael Mosley goes around to research facilities to find out more about the subject.
http://documentaryheaven.com/eat-fast-and-live-longer/


Here's a peer review paper on Intermittent Fasting vs the same daily calorie deficit. Papers might be hard to read so you can just skip down to the conclusion. Very easy to read those when I come across such papers. End result was that both groups lost the same amount of weight but people who practiced IF, retained more muscle mass.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00873.x/full

The problem is that the quality of research done on intermittent fasting, IMO is limited. Most of the "evidence" is anecdote and professional opinion. The actual article you posted is a literature review paper, which is actually fairly low quality on the pyramid of evidence. It's more of an opinion paper with resources to support it, but not with any sort of systematic assessment of the quality. There needs to be many more randomized controlled trials done in humans before we can say anything definitively. Right now, it's a craze that some people live and swear by. I hope in the next 10 years, they can iron out a bit more higher quality research to show one way or the other.

 

[BeeBoop]

The problem is that the quality of research done on intermittent fasting, IMO is limited. Most of the "evidence" is anecdote and professional opinion. The actual article you posted is a literature review paper, which is actually fairly low quality on the pyramid of evidence. It's more of an opinion paper with resources to support it, but not with any sort of systematic assessment of the quality. There needs to be many more randomized controlled trials done in humans before we can say anything definitively. Right now, it's a craze that some people live and swear by. I hope in the next 10 years, they can iron out a bit more higher quality research to show one way or the other.

I agree the research is new but what I feel works in favor of IF is that all research has something positive to say about it. Maybe there are some papers that say otherwise? I haven't seen any yet but I'm not an expert.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I agree the research is new but what I feel works in favor of IF is that all research has something positive to say about it. Maybe there are some papers that say otherwise? I haven't seen any yet but I'm not an expert.

I've read a couple of papers that says it doesn't do much at all. Let me see if I can conjure up the citations at least.

 

[max347]

Trainers are really just mostly useless.
http://www.uwlax.edu/urc/jur-online/PDF/2003/goodman-larson-et-al.pdf

Thats just the first hit but you can go to pubmed too. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23404961

I'm not saying its not true, but I'd like to point out that the top link used a sample size of 22 and the bottom one used 'lean' people only and some qualitative data.

When n<30, I pretty much disregard any 'statistical conclusions' researchers get. That is basic stats, I'm not sure how they get away with it.

 

[Whisper]

I agree the research is new but what I feel works in favor of IF is that all research has something positive to say about it. Maybe there are some papers that say otherwise? I haven't seen any yet but I'm not an expert.

Researchers are just as susceptible to fads as any other group of people, particularly if they feel like it'll make it easier for them to get something published. Thus, it's pretty easy to publish a series of "review" articles that essentially are all citing the same handful of flawed studies; after a while, people get lazy and stop actually critically reviewing the original studies (since they've been cited so often), and instead start accepting them de facto as well-validated. So looking at the number of articles on a topic doesn't necessarily say much, particularly if you skip to the conclusions...given that there's absolutely nothing to prevent people from making faulty assumptions in said conclusions.

There's all sorts of psych-related research on satiety, the effects of early-life eating patterns on binge eating habits and physiological changes during development (e.g., changes in satiety signals, in the proportions of various fat cells and fat/muscle ratios, etc.), potential relationships between binge eating and anxiety and/or obsessive-compulsive traits, and lots more. It's a very complex subject area, and if the IF studies aren't rigorously screening and controlling for a whole host of extraneous characteristics and variables in their sample groups, then their studies could essentially be nullified before even really getting started.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

I'm not saying its not true, but I'd like to point out that the top link used a sample size of 22 and the bottom one used 'lean' people only and some qualitative data.

When n<30, I pretty much disregard any 'statistical conclusions' researchers get. That is basic stats, I'm not sure how they get away with it.

Your assumption that n must be greater than 30 is not sound statistics. If the researcher does good, high quality research, then they will calculate their power (beta) prior to completing the research. With that, they can calculate an n that will yield appropriate statistics with the least amount of subjects necessary. In some research studies, an n of 15 is more than sufficient with a power of .8. That number is usually considered ideal for research. Please see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power

 

[KidNiki1]

SC, with regard to intermittent fasting, what is your opinion of the 5:2 plan? Where you eat normal calories 5 days and the other 2 days limit calorie intake to about 1/3 your normal amount?

Apparently it has some really positive effects on blood chemistry in terms of lower cholesterol, blood glucose, etc.

I just recently heard of this and was wondering what you thought of it.

 

[darkxshade]

I do intermittent fasting and love it. It's such a freedom waking up and going to work and not have to worry about what to do for breakfast & lunch. I never get hunger pangs anymore, it's like my stomach gave up and decided to work around my schedule.

The only drawback to it is in social situations but fortunately, most social outings for me is at night however I occasionally break my fast as necessary.

I've been doing intermitting fasting for about 18 months now.

 

[BeeBoop]

Your assumption that n must be greater than 30 is not sound statistics. If the researcher does good, high quality research, then they will calculate their power (beta) prior to completing the research. With that, they can calculate an n that will yield appropriate statistics with the least amount of subjects necessary. In some research studies, an n of 15 is more than sufficient with a power of .8. That number is usually considered ideal for research. Please see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power

Would you maybe have the source of the paper this article is talking about? It's one of the IF claims that probably interest me most, mainly the increase in HGH proteins. Is this information even credible? I first read about it in science daily and that article said it was a reprint from the link below. Couldn't find any papers in there, just what their findings stated.
http://intermountainhealthcare.org/about/news/Pages/home.aspx?NewsID=713

 

[Megatomic]

I'd like to know how IF can be integrated into a training plan for a person who is preparing to run a VERY LONG trail race. My peak will have me running over 70 miles per week two months from now. If anyone has any insight, I'd love to hear it.