Fixed mealtimes prevent overweight

Avoid overweight due to proper timing when eating?

05/18/2012

A time-limited meal intake reduces the risk of overweight - at least in mice. US researchers have found that fixed mealtimes of a maximum of eight hours a day significantly reduce the risk of overweight.

So far, diet-related obesity has been attributed exclusively to increased calorie or fat intake, but current research suggests that daily mealtimes play a greater role in overweight development than previously thought, according to researchers led by Megumi Hatori from Salk. Institute of Biological Studies in La Jolla (USA).

Eating times of eight hours a day prevent consequences of high-fat diet
In experiments with mice, it has been shown that with constant calorie intake, the timing of eating intake has a significant impact on whether or not the animals become overweight, Megumi Hatori and colleagues report. As part of their study, the researchers had formed two groups of test mice, one group able to get something to eat 24 hours a day, while the other only had access to food for eight hours a day. The food used was extremely high in calories and 60 percent of the calories were derived from fat, write the US researchers in the journal „Cell metabolism“. The experiment ran for a hundred days, at the end of which the researchers came to a surprising conclusion. While the possible meal time was limited to eight hours a day, the animals consumed the same amount of calories in less time, but they had far less weight gain and a significantly reduced risk of complications such as diabetes, Hatori and colleagues report in the article „Limited-time feeding without reducing calorie intake prevents metabolic disorders in mice on high-fat diets“. Due to the fixed meal times, the animals apparently remain rather healthy, the US researchers continue.

Limited food intake reduces overweight risk
According to the experts, the study results suggest that longer daily lunches between meals may counteract the negative effects of high-calorie food. There is no other explanation for the fact that animals with free access to feed increasingly developed physical problems such as obesity, elevated cholesterol and blood sugar levels and liver complaints, while the other mice had hardly any secondary damage from the high-fat diet. According to the researchers, weight gain was also significantly lower in the case of limited food intake than with free food access. The weight gain in the mice with the regulated food intake was on average only two-thirds of the weight gain of their conspecifics from the other experimental group. The researchers assume that the change of eight hours of food intake and 16 hours without food better fit the natural metabolic rhythm of the animals than a constant availability of the feed. „We were able to show that in mice, time-limited food intake is a non-pharmacological strategy to combat obesity and related diseases“, write the US researchers.

Timing of food intake to combat obesity
So far, the confirmation of the effect in humans is still pending, but the researchers were confident that there is a similar relationship between the time limit of food intake and the risk of overweight. Not only diets with significant calorie reduction and / or sports activities could help in the fight against obesity, but also the timing of food intake offer a good approach to avoiding weight problems and related diseases, said the US researchers. The results of Megumi Hatori and colleagues caused quite a stir in the professional community, as there was always the assumption that many small meals throughout the day carry a lower risk of overweight than a few sumptuous meals at set times. This theory must be fundamentally reconsidered in the light of the current results.

Organism switches from storage mode to processing mode
The US researchers explained the difference in the weight gain of the mice with continuous feeding, the organism is constantly in storage mode and tries to store the fat as quickly as possible, while interrupting food intake for several hours, the metabolism of the storage mode in the processing mode. Fat is burned during daily fasting and cholesterol and blood sugar are lowered, which counteracts the development of obesity and the typical sequelae. Also, according to the researchers in the processing mode, the repair processes are activated in the organism, which alleviates the inflammatory reactions in the body of the overweight. (Fp)

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Picture: Gerd Altmann / Dieter Petereit