I don’t believe it, but that might be because I work with the news 24/7 and don’t believe anything they say.
https://www.sciencealert.com/skipping-meals-could-be-much-worse-for-you-than-we-realized
While there is probably some merit to this, there are dozens more categories of “meal skippers” than simply intermittent fasters or OMADers. A well crafted OMAD still delivers quality nutrition regularly.
Here’s an excerpt from that article that articulates my point …
Meal-skipping was also more prevalent among those who smoked more, drank more alcohol, were more food insecure, who ate less nutritious food, had more snacks, and took in less energy overall.
They did not properly account for all variables. They stated that those who ate one meal a day were more likely to smoke and had increase alcohol intake. Those are 2 variables that should have been accounted for before looking at one meal a day versus 3 meals. If you are doing a properly controlled study, the two groups should have the same makeup with only one variable being different. Its a bad study, but much of academics has to publish or perish so it happens more frequently now.
As others have pointed out correlation does not equal causation.
Meal skippers might be as a whole statistically lower income, which may Explain the correlation, and absolve the actual fasting as a cause of death.
Meal skippers might be skipping meals because they’re already in bad health, And maybe using it as a tool to lose weight. This may also explain the correlation
Two possible examples that presents confounding variables