Ideal Meals: Three Beats Six Seven Days a Week

As we head into the third week of icy temps and maybe more snow, one clear comfort is three homecooked hot meals a day: Hot cereal at breakfast, hot soup and sandwich at lunch, and a savory hot stew at dinner.

For meals, the number three is traditional, but a growing group of hungries have opted instead for six meals a day, thinking that the more times they eat the less likely they’ll be to overeat.

But the FRESH (Frequency of Eating and Satiety Hormones) study at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Supported by the National Cancer Institute plus the National Institute of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Disease and led by cancer epidemiologists Xiaochen Zhang and Marian L. Neuhouser says fuhgeddaboudit it. Three beats six seven days a week.

The proofs, published in the journal Obesity found that contrary to public opinion, eating more often might not increase satiety (the feeling of fulness) because it appeared to interfere with the body’s natural hunger cues.

The FRESH study design was simplicity itself. Fifty healthy adult volunteers (mean age, 32 years, 78 percent women, and 60 percent non-Hispanic White). agreed to follow two different meal plans for three weeks each, with a hiatus in between.

The first served the classic three meals a day. The second divided the exactly same amount of food and calories into six daily meals. As with all such clinical trials there was a day of reckoning.

In this case, on the final day of each 221-day phase, participants came into the clinic for a full day of testing. Blood samples were collected every hour for six hours to measure appetite-related hormones. Participants also rated their hunger and fullness levels throughout the day.

The results? Three meals won. Ghrelin, the hormone that makes us feel hungry, spiked before meals and dropped afterward—which is what you’d expect if your body is clearly responding to meals. Likewise, the hormone PYY, which signals fullness, rose after meals and then gradually dropped. People also said they felt truly hungry before meals and full after.

The six meals fared less well in both categories. Hormone levels showed much smaller shifts compared to the those experienced with three meals. And body size appeared to matter: Overweight volunteers showed even less pronounced reactions, meaning even they seemed more vulnerable to over-eating when choosing smaller, frequent meals.

In the end, Zhang, Neuhouser and their compatriots concluded that eating three times a day actually seemed to help the body better recognize hunger and satisfaction, which could help prevent overeating in the long run.

Of course, they acknowledged everyone’s body is different. Some people may feel better with more frequent meals due to medical conditions, blood sugar issues, or just personal preference. In short, in the end, three meals a day or six, this research also offers reason to listen to one’s own hunger cues as well.