Who has research showing 3 meals/day is superior to 6 meals/day?
Please help! Like my last article on intermittent fasting, I am working on another unbiased look at a controversial subject – this time meal frequency. I need your help with finding any research that shows that fewer meals is superior to more meals – the reverse is much easier to find. I am looking for research that has not already been dismissed in Alan Aragon’s “An objective look at intermittent fasting“.
Last year a policy statement from the JISSN came out on meal frequency and the basic conclusion was that 6 meals a day was *probably* superior to 3 meals a day. By the way, the International Society of Sports Nutrition (JISSN) is one of the most respected nutritional organizations around so lots of people paid close attention to this position paper. After this policy statement came out there was a rebuttal written by Alan Aragon published by leangains.com. Alan Aragon made it clear that although he has the highest regard for JISSN, in this case he thinks they missed the mark somewhat because of their bias although he agreed with JISSN on their conclusion:
“Nonetheless, more well-designed research studies involving various meal frequencies, particularly in physically active/athletic populations are warranted.”
The interesting thing to me is what was NOT said in Alan Aragon and Martin Berkhan’s rebuttal to this study. Unless I missed this, neither Alan Aragon nor Martin Berkhan offered any research studies up which prove the opposite, that is, any studies that show fewer meals superior to more meals. I know that the whole leangains website is about intermittent fasting which by definition means fewer meals but could someone post URLs to pages where he shows research that shows fewer meals is superior to more meals? Again, I am looking for ones that have not already been dismissed as bad research in Alan Aragon’s “An objective look at intermittent fasting”.
Please help me with info so I can provide a balanced view on this subject. I need research studies that show fewer meals to be superior to more meals.