Small Meals, Big Payoff: Keeping Hunger And Calories In Check
When presented with a tempting buffet of French food, not
overeating can be a challenge. But a new study by researchers in
Lyon suggests there are strategies that will help people resist
temptation. People trying to keep off excess weight are
frequently told that it's better to eat small amounts of food
frequently during the day, rather than the typical breakfast,
lunch and dinner. The idea is that more frequent eating will
stave off hunger pangs that may lead to overeating. The problem
with this advice, according to Xavier Allirot, a research
scientist at the Institut Paul Bocuse, just outside Lyon, is
that there's not much evidence supporting it. "There is no
scientific consensus as to the optimum number of meals we should
have for weight management and speculations regarding this are
often contradictory," he and his colleagues explain in the
online edition of the journal Physiology & Behavior. So Allirot
and colleagues from several French resear