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The abstract says “The investigators observed a number of common characteristics among participants eating fewer than three meals per day (around 40% of respondents)—they are more likely to be younger, male, non-Hispanic Black, have less education and lower family income, smoke, drink more alcohol, be food insecure, and eat less nutritious food, more snacks, and less energy intake overall.” The authors claim they’ve accounted for these, but I’m skeptical.
These are people with unhealthy lifestyles, not people (like the participants of this subreddit) intentionally doing planned fasting and consuming nutritious food during their eating intervals.
Interesting… But there is too little information. Like, what is meant by “diet quality”? What qualified as a “good quality diet” in the research? USDA guidelines?
There is also a mention on “more snacks”, but “fewer than three meals a day”.
This raises questions on what a “meal” would look like to the researchers.
Does this means they don’t count snacks as a meal? Or are “snack for meals” counted? If snacks are not counted, are the participants grazing all day but do not count them as a “meal”, so they are “eating fewer” than three meals a day?
Unfortunately, I think that this study leaves too much to be desired, unless it can provide more information on the above questions.
I’m going to be completely frank, nutritional studies are basically all complete and total bullshit. The reason is it’s unethical to trap a significant sample size in a prison for 30 years and record their outcomes. So these studies are self-reported, observational, and often lead to findings that are correlated but not causative.
One example: vitamin D supplements are correlated with higher immune deficiency rates. The knee jerk reaction is vitamin D bad. The reality is simply that people who take vitamin D supplements have immune disorders at a higher rate to begin with.
Basically, people who fast include people with eating disorders and overweight people. Of course that’s going to be correlated with higher mortality.
I think it is a good idea to keep track on follow up research, but this particular paper is not convincing at all. Everything is self reported, they use only one survey per year which only take into account the last 24h, there is no causal identification strategy.
For example, it can be that these deaths are caused by other factors which correlate with less meals a day, since “As shown in Table 1, compared with participants with three meals per day, par- ticipants eating fewer than three meals per day were more likely to be younger, men, non-Hispanic Black, with less ed- ucation and lower family income, current smokers, heavy alcohol drinkers, higher physical activity levels, lower total energy intake and lower diet quality, food insecure, and higher frequency of snacks. They were less likely to have diabetes, and cancer at baseline. The characteristics for par- ticipants who ate more than three meals per day were comparable to those for participants with three meals per day, except participants who ate more than three meals per day were more likely to be with higher physical activity levels, higher total energy intake, and higher diet quality, lower BMI, lower frequency of snacks, and less likely to have CVD at baseline.”
The standard American diet, the ADA diet, and the AHA diets have left me on loads of meds and, to quote legally blone, with stretch marks and a fat ass.
I was on a short road to my death and my doctor had me upping my insulin and referred me to a kidney specialist because my kidneys were in decline. 9 weeks later, I have been doing IF successfully, have managed multiple 25 hour, 42-45 hour fasts, and I just completed a 96.5 hour fast that I had to stop because my blood sugars were dropping below 80 WITHOUT medication. My pain is under control, I feel wonderful on most days, I have a better outlook on my health now versus where I was 9 weeks ago which was depressed and exhausted and unmotivated to do anything.
I was headed to an early death or a life as an invalid with missing limbs and broken organs . I’m going to roll the dice and stick with IF and extended fasting as this is the best I’ve felt in years. I am hopeful and excited to keep going and get healthier.
If eating healthier and fasting sends me to my grave at least I’ll walk to my death and feel really good when it happens instead of being wheeled to it because my legs had to be amputated from complications related to diabetes and I’m in excruciating pain.
Also, who funded this study? Who benefits from the findings? Remember no one makes money when we fast and limit our food intake.
Stay healthy everyone!
I have felt heatlhier eating 1 1/2 meals per day than I’ve every felt dong 3 or 3 with snacks….and I wonder….how much info do you have to back this up?? I feel healthier, I nevver feel hunger/deprived. I eat cards and whatever else is healthy to go with the nutrients that I feel is the very most important part of a healthy eathing routine. I NEVER starve myself. I would love to be a little ibt lower in weight overalll but it is so far down the scale of importance for me. Health before anything. I would definitely agree that ovefeating is tragic and leads to death. But to say that skipping meals - especially if the ones you have are actually healthy-are bad/negative seems extreme. Nonetheless, less is just never more in this area so I agree with that. I don’t know the facts and can’t attest to the value – but there was this one scientist who believed that less to no calories was the answer to longevity - well, she didn’t live to be 60. It was a huge dissapointment to the community who followed her – she was very healthy. I don’t think junk/more calories is the answer…but I am a believer at this point in moderation and an emphasis on activity/exercise rather than (but not exclusive to) working out/exercise.
We have to start pushing for a ranking system in medical studies. In law if a case is no longer “good law” it will have a yellow flag on it so that you know it is in doubt.
The publishers should have a ranking system so that studies are flagged as to how generally trust worthy the study is.
So if objective eyes see problems with the study it should get a flag.
I have seen so many BAD studies over the years – that seem to get the same “credit” as good studies. We have to stop that. An objective publisher should publish all studies and create a system for rating the study.
I would take this study with a grain of salt, though it holds some merit of course.
If you think about it, every chance to eat is a chance to get either nutrients that your body needs or otherwise junk. So statistically speaking, every time you eat junk, you will deprive your body of something it dearly needs.
Modern food (even if you eat health btw) is deprived of most micro nutrients. Meat gets put in brine so it holds more water which will make you eat watered down meat that has less protein. Same goes for most vegetables and fruit. If it grows and ripes faster, it holds more water and is therefore less nutrient dense.
If you top that of with skipping meals you will have a problem on your hands.
As far as I saw, the study did not get into detail about supplements or any form of multi vitamin, so I would call that a blind Spot maybe.
I’ve been intermittent fasting for 5 years now (19-5 daily). I believe in it.
But I’m concerned now, seeing how flippantly people are responding to the new scientific evidence that goes against their beliefs.
Is this sub an echo-chamber?